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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?

Read Debates, a new Web-only feature culled from Readers' Opinions, published every Thursday.

robkettenburg03 - 09:52am Apr 3, 2003 EST (# 11000 of 11005)

The first casualty of war is innocence - http://www.palsolidarity.org/rachelphotos.htm

The second casualty of war is the truth - http://www.angelfire.com/ny5/robkettenburg

lchic - 09:54am Apr 3, 2003 EST (# 11001 of 11005)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

2/3 of Saddam's guys are 'missing' .... possibly inside the city of Baghdad.

That along with all residents having guns and being 'trigger' happy ....

.... may mean that services will be CUT

lchic - 09:58am Apr 3, 2003 EST (# 11002 of 11005)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

The logic of the Iraqi matter

would have been for the 'regime'

to have stepped back

saved on infrastructure and lives

...

It was the ONLY logic!

rshow55 - 10:00am Apr 3, 2003 EST (# 11003 of 11005)
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.

The Philosopher of Islamic Terror By PAUL BERMAN http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/23/magazine/23GURU.html

" In the days after Sept. 11, 2001, many people anticipated a quick and satisfying American victory over Al Qaeda. The terrorist army was thought to be no bigger than a pirate ship, and the newly vigilant police forces of the entire world were going to sink the ship with swift arrests and dark maneuvers.

. . . .

"Yet Al Qaeda has seemed unfazed. Its popularity, which was hard to imagine at first, has turned out to be large and genuine in more than a few countries. . . .

. . . .

" It would be nice to think that, in the war against terror, our side, too, speaks of deep philosophical ideas -- it would be nice to think that someone is arguing with the terrorists and with the readers of Sayyid Qutb. But here I have my worries. The followers of Qutb speak, in their wild fashion, of enormous human problems, and they urge one another to death and to murder. But the enemies of these people speak of what? The political leaders speak of United Nations resolutions, of unilateralism, of multilateralism, of weapons inspectors, of coercion and noncoercion. This is no answer to the terrorists. The terrorists speak insanely of deep things. The antiterrorists had better speak sanely of equally deep things. Presidents will not do this. Presidents will dispatch armies, or decline to dispatch armies, for better and for worse.

But who will speak of the sacred and the secular, of the physical world and the spiritual world? Who will defend liberal ideas against the enemies of liberal ideas? Who will defend liberal principles in spite of liberal society's every failure? President George W. Bush, in his speech to Congress a few days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, announced that he was going to wage a war of ideas. He has done no such thing. He is not the man for that.

Philosophers and religious leaders will have to do this on their own. Are they doing so? Armies are in motion, but are the philosophers and religious leaders, the liberal thinkers, likewise in motion? There is something to worry about here, an aspect of the war that liberal society seems to have trouble understanding -- one more worry, on top of all the others, and possibly the greatest worry of all.

If we just asked people to check for how well their ideas fit the things they have to decently care about - that might be all the "deep philosophy" peace, prosperity, and reasonable religion would need.

rshow55 - 10:02am Apr 3, 2003 EST (# 11004 of 11005)
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.

Starting this year - I made a guess rshow55 - 08:20am Jan 1, 2003 EST (# 7177 <a href="/webin/WebX?14@28.UpbZapbp64w.215199@.f28e622/8700">rshow55 1/1/03 8:20am</a>

I think this is a year where some lessons are going to have to be learned about stability and function of international systems, in terms of basic requirements of order , symmetry , and harmony - at the levels that make sense - and learned clearly and explicitly enough to produce systems that have these properties by design, not by chance.

From where we are now - it shouldn't be that hard to do.

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