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Missile Defense

Technology has always found its greatest consumer in a nation's war and defense efforts. Since the last attempts at a "Star Wars" defense system, has technology changed considerably enough to make the latest Missile Defense initiatives more successful? Can such an application of science be successful? Is a militarized space inevitable, necessary or impossible?

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lchic - 08:56am Mar 19, 2003 EST (# 10196 of 10198)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

Saw header - ' Saudi Arabia offers refuge for Saddam ' ... blinked .... and it was gone ...

rshow55 - 09:15am Mar 19, 2003 EST (# 10197 of 10198)
Can we do a better job of finding truth? YES. Click "rshow55" for some things Lchic and I have done and worked for on this thread.

Almarst , reading your recent postings, and many in the past, I've reluctantly concluded that the Bush administration, just now, is doing things that have to be done.

Conditions of explosive instability and stability can look almost exactly the same. This time, on the big things, the situation looks stable to me. In my opinion - the world is close to a transition to real stability - and a higher level of function in human terms.

I believe we'd be there if leaders of nation states had the wisdom, fortitude and courage to face the fact that there have to be limits on the right of people in power to decieve themselves and others. Limits that put some limits on personal political power and on sovereignty.

Maybe not severe limits. Maybe not limits applied with great consistency. But some limits. Enforced sometimes. When it matters enough.

If that were faced, the US would have to deal with some embarrassments. But an index of how much is screwed up, misunderstood, and deceptive is how well national groups treat each other - and how well their cooperation works in human terms.

The human conditions in Russia, and in most countries of the world - ought to be carefully considered - and if there are reasons to be indignant about the United States - and there surely are - the are corresponding amounts of indignation that might very well be directed on how other countries treat their own people - and act internationally. Perhaps, after a little while, indignation may give way to efforts to make things better in ways that can work.

There is no realistic possibility of good solutions without some change on basic relations between "truth" - "honor" and "legitimacy" - some effort to make these notion more consistent. That would be a major change - but we need to make it - because the consequences of not making it are so predictably chaotic and ugly. I think that may be clearer now than it was 2 1/2 years ago.

8833 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@28.RmmRaxS95bU.82863@.f28e622/10359 contains a request I've made again and again and again.

"If power holders - including especially power holders from other nation states - asked that some key issues be faced - it could happen easily. Unless power from an external source is applied - such things may never happen - regardless of what broader public interests may be.

We are now heading into what the TIMES calls a "worst case scenario" http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/06/opinion/06THU1.html - - I'm not sure things are going badly at all, considering. A lot looks good to me - some necessary fights are occuring that may clarify international relations some. But I"m sure of this. Unless people do a significantly better job of facing up to checkable realities about the world and themselves - there can be no really "good scenarios" that actually play out.

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New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense