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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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rshow55 - 08:11pm May 8, 2003 EST (# 11512 of 11531)
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.

11510 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.lQh8aea18lX.2355761@.f28e622/13103 includes this:

"If I'd been able to tell Casey things I know now - I think a lot of things would be a lot better - from the perspective of "the average reader of The New York Times" and many other perspectives, as well."

Does it make sense, now, for me to set these things out, not to a government official, but publicly, on this thread?

By now, Casey might well say so - I've tried to make contact with the government a long time. But he'd want it done tactfully, and effectively.

In a world so screwed up that there are 100s of deaths per hour more than there ought to be (many thousands of human life years/hour wasted, and more blighted) - I'd like to make statements that on balance reduce messes and agonies, rather than increase them. So I'm hesitating to respond to some of Commondata's points, till I think a little more. I don't feel like backing off from anything Commondata set out in 11508 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.lQh8aea18lX.2355761@.f28e622/13101

Here's something that may be "obvious" - but is still important -- a fairly conventional list of basic human needs:

Food

Shelter

Health and safety

Energy and economic power

Information

Personal and social meaning

One wants enough food, and wants that food to be wholesome and pleasant. One wants enough comfortable shelter. Enough health care and enough protection that fear is only a small consideration in daily life. Enough energy and money to permit reasonable comfort. Enough information, and correct enough information, that one can understand the world one lives in, and make workable life decisions in it. And one needs a reasonable place as a member of a human community.

These are all essential human needs.

One doesn't want to trade off one of these basic needs for another in any way that involves serious sacrifices. One wants to satisfy them all, in ways that work for the human beings involved.

For essentially all of human history, and for most people now, these needs are not all well met - and meeting some of these needs calls for sacrifices in others. Many people, most places, are ready to follow any political group that they think can better meets their food, shelter, health and safety needs - even when that requires them to sign on to, or submit to, patterns of ideas that they wouldn't identify with otherwise.

The challenges involved in meeting these problems are largely technical. Partly logical. And there is a lot of room for improvement on the aspects that are technical and logical.

Casey knew that, and so did a lot of other people in the government. One set of technical and logical problems associated with this is politically awkward. And also morally problematic. Casey wanted to understand how command economies - including totalitarian ones such as Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, sometimes were as objectively effective as they were.

Partly in hopes of finding ways to get similar good results, in the United States or other countries, without the tyranny.

Sometimes, alas, in hopes of teaching the leader of a client state to function - to our percieved short-term advantage - with tyranny. Saddam came to know a great deal about running a coercive, nearly totalitarian command economy. He may have been tutored in how to do so by Americans,

rshow55 - 08:14pm May 8, 2003 EST (# 11513 of 11531)
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.

As of now, a lot of Iraqis would give the transition to US rule bad marks, not only for nationalistic reasons, but in terms of basic needs that all people share. A scorecard from many Iraqis might look like this.

Food - - worse

Shelter - - worse

Health and safety - - much worse

Energy and economic power - - worse, more expensive

Information - - possibly better

Personal and social meaning - - ? ? ?

For the US to be as accepted as Bush and others would like it to be - we need better report cards than this. Since all the basic needs are essential - we need to learn how to meet all these needs better than we now know how to do.

It is both naive and inhuman to expect people to forget about their most basic physical needs when they evaluate a government - even a brutal one.

Casey knew that America was far, far short of knowing how to meet the human needs of the countries we wanted as allies - and the needs of the whole world - and worried about it some.

Almarst has raised similar points, and been right to do so.

lchic - 08:46pm May 8, 2003 EST (# 11514 of 11531)
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