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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.
(11032 previous messages)
dccougar
- 11:24pm Apr 3, 2003 EST (#
11033 of 11037) Everyone is entitled to his own
opinion but not his own facts.
Almorsht: Whatever happens in the weeks
ahead, George W. Bush has “lost” the war in Iraq.
Reality would seem to contradict such a statement. In fact,
this is a ridiculous statement in the face of the evidence.
Alborscht: He completely miscalculated the
reaction of the Iraqi people to an invasion.
Well, see, that's the problem with getting your news
exclusively from Pravda and Al Jazeera -- everything
has that Arab slant, which at this point has to be pretty
pessimistic. But you should pay close attention to the
"reaction of the Iraqi people" after the coalition forces
accommodate the Ba'ath Party death squads and other Saddam
loyalists to achieve their "martyrdom". I don't think they're
as committed to pessimism as you are.
By the way, Comrade Sunshine, as someone said, "Pessimism
as a belief not only becomes a passive set of predictions
about the future but also plays a dynamic role in ensuring the
deteriorating quality of tomorrow's world." Is that really
your aim - as it appears to be?
almarst2003
- 11:32pm Apr 3, 2003 EST (#
11034 of 11037)
http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/commentary/2003/0303stmt.html
In 1996 Foreign Policy in Focus set out to build a network
committed to the goal of making the U.S. a more responsible
world leader. By "responsible" we meant a government
vigorously pursuing the unfinished business of building
international norms and institutions capable of preventing war
and advancing political and economic justice.
During the past two years our government has taken us
resolutely on a march in the opposite direction. It has gone
out of its way to tear up international agreements and
undermine international institutions. Since 9-11 the pace of
the march has accelerated. Security has been used as the
pretext for a multi-pronged assault on civil liberties, a
draining of the public treasury, and the appearance of new
U.S. military bases and troops in nearly every continent of
the world.
Today we find ourselves at the place where, logically, this
march has been leading us all along: a pre-emptive and illegal
war. The international norms for waging war that the U.S.
signed on to when it helped craft the UN charter have clearly
not been met. Iraq has not attacked us--the perception held by
remarkable numbers of Americans that it has
notwithstanding--and poses no imminent threat to do so. Our
government has been cynically seeking the gloss of UN approval
for an action it has made clear all along it would reserve for
itself the right to take, approval or no. This doublespeak has
been one of the means by which it has undermined the success
of the international community's chosen course of inspections;
withholding key intelligence data from the inspectors is
another.
The stakes in this war extend far beyond the irreducible
facts of the Iraqis as well as Americans who will be killed,
electively. The Bush administration has committed this nation
to a course it has never in its history taken before.
Preventive wars against possible threats will now be official
U.S. foreign policy. War with Iraq, in other words, is only
the debut of a program whose goal is permanent U.S. global
military dominance. This is not hyperbole; it is now
enshrined, codified, in U.S. national security doctrine.
As we move into war, dissent from this program will be more
difficult. The administration will be working even harder to
manage the news, and control the national conversation on this
war. Patriotism, we are already being told, requires
unquestioning support for the war now being fought in our
name. We reject this. FPIF's reason for being is to insert
progressive voices into the public debate on foreign policy:
in the various publications and electronic forums on our
website, and in the promotion of the experts in our Think Tank
Without Walls in print journalism, radio, TV and public forums
around the country and abroad. This mission is now more
important than ever.
Our hope is that citizens will find materials from FPIF
useful in the discussions they will be having in the weeks to
come at the bus stop, on their college campuses, at the water
cooler, in the supermarket, in letters they will write to
their newspaper editors, and at public forums and
demonstrations.
The administration's cynical attempt to use the United
Nations for its own ends has failed. The UN stood up to
crushing pressure, and said no. So did the millions of
citizens of the international community who have turned out in
the streets around the world, and the millions of Americans
who have joined them. This international force, as the New
York Times put it, is now the other superpower.
Senator Robert Byrd said yesterday in a speech to the
Senate that "After the war has ended, the United States will
have to rebuild much more than the country of Iraq. We will
have to rebuild America's image around the globe." The wealth
of international support for the U.S. following 9-11 has been
squandered, turned to dismay and disgust. The task of making
the U.S. a responsible world le
almarst2003
- 11:39pm Apr 3, 2003 EST (#
11035 of 11037)
dccougar,
If what you call "optimism" leads to illegal and bloody war
for Oil and World Domination, then YES, I am PESSIMIST.
almarst2003
- 11:42pm Apr 3, 2003 EST (#
11036 of 11037)
dccougar - http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/
is NOT Al-Jazeera nor Pravda, if you care to take a look
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