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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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fredmoore - 09:45pm May 1, 2003 EST (# 11453 of 11500)

Johnson ....

You'll have to do better than that George!

:-) smile

lchic - 10:31pm May 1, 2003 EST (# 11454 of 11500)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

Cuba's getting a deserved bad press these days ... it has the world's worst record re imprisonment of journalists ... what is it that Castro doesn't want us to hear?

lchic - 08:45am May 2, 2003 EST (# 11455 of 11500)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

Bushie seemed 'at home' on the big ship ...

lchic - 08:47am May 2, 2003 EST (# 11456 of 11500)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

Friendly Fire --- after the fact

the breakdown of friendly-fire incidents ... what did they find --- that folks can't read map co-ordinates?

rshow55 - 04:30pm May 2, 2003 EST (# 11457 of 11500)
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.

President Bush's Remarks Declaring an End to Major Combat in Iraq http://nytimes.com/2003/05/02/international/worldspecial/02PTEX.html

This is serious language from President Bush:

"Our war against terror is proceeding according to principles that I have made clear to all: Any person involved in committing or planning terrorist attacks against the American people becomes an enemy of this country, and a target of American justice.

"Any person, organization or government that supports, protects, or harbors terrorists is complicit in the murder of the innocent, and equally guilty of terrorist crimes.

"Any outlaw regime that has ties to terrorist groups, and seeks or possesses weapons of mass destruction, is a grave danger to the civilized world, and will be confronted. And anyone in the world, including the Arab world, who works and sacrifices for freedom has a loyal friend in the United States.

The Treaty of Westphalia is not mentioned. Standards are mentioned. We're in a new situation.

There are new opportunites, and there is a chance that the world can become a very much better place in human terms. In major ways, the horror is less.

" For a hundred years of war, culminating in the nuclear age, military technology was designed and deployed to inflict casualties on an ever-growing scale. In defeating Nazi Germany and imperial Japan, Allied forces destroyed entire cities, while enemy leaders who started the conflict were safe until the final days. Military power was used to end a regime by breaking a nation.

" Today, we have the greater power to free a nation by breaking a dangerous and aggressive regime. With new tactics and precision weapons, we can achieve military objectives without directing violence against civilians. No device of man can remove the tragedy from war. Yet it is a great advance when the guilty have far more to fear from war than the innocent.

President Bush is right - this more sensible targeting is progress. And though no device of man can remove the tragedy from war, we may be approaching a time where the incidence of death and agony from war becomes far, far less than it has been. Stably. Permanently.

For that to happen, so it works, new standards of international law, that actually make human sense in balanced terms, are going to have to be negotiated into being.

It seems to me that this ought to be possible. The United States has great power - but lives in a world where it depends on many, many other nations. Those nations have power, too.

The technology of military function has been improved.

Better patterns of diplomacy need to be demonstrated, too. If the level of deception can be reduced, and the means of checking increased - that should be possible.

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