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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.

almarst2002 - 11:02pm May 25, 2003 EST (# 12009 of 12023)

Competition between the two superpowers served to constrain their respective behaviour, especially beyond their agreed spheres of influence. It may not be "politically correct" to speak of the merits of a bipolar world, but it gave space and opportunity to people in the former colonies where now, in a world where there is just one master, there is much less. The anti-colonial moment was shaped, and in part enabled, by the emergence of the bipolar world after the second world war.

The undermining of the sanctity of sovereignty has taken little more than a decade. It should be remembered that at the time of the first Gulf war, "regime change" was an entirely unacceptable proposition, breaching as it did the accepted conventions concerning sovereignty: the first Bush administration recognised this by not taking Baghdad. There followed a slow erosion, with the western intervention in Kosovo - the benefits of which remain dubious - proving to be the most important violation of the principle before the invasion of Iraq. Embedded in this lack of respect for other cultures is a barely concealed racism. To this day, the racist legacy of the British empire is little considered and hugely underestimated. The new imperialism carries its own racial charge, in some respects greater than before. The new global fault line - the struggle between "good" and "evil", between "civilisation" and "barbarity" - is terrorism; and the agents of terror are, in this discourse, usually brown, sometimes black, never white. In the heyday of European colonialism, expansionism was in part a by-product of imperial competition. This time the divide is constituted as that between the developed and a very large part of the developing world. At the heart of the new imperial politics, in other words, lies race.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,963380,00.html

almarst2002 - 11:09pm May 25, 2003 EST (# 12010 of 12023)

The "FREEDOM OF SPEACH" ... (How do you spell it in Arabic?)

The U.S. ambassador to Morocco, Margaret Tutwiler, was dispatched to Baghdad to polish and package the U.S. occupation. But she triggered a rebellion earlier this month when she and a young White House aide in Baghdad, Dan Senor, intervened with strong judgments about programs and said that broadcasts would be reviewed in advance by the wife of a prominent Kurdish militia leader

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38682-2003May25.html?nav=hptop_ts

WOW!!!

almarst2002 - 11:20pm May 25, 2003 EST (# 12011 of 12023)

Delegates Approved By Americans Select Kirkuk City Council - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35973-2003May24.html

Not much different from the American parctice at home;)

almarst2002 - 11:35pm May 25, 2003 EST (# 12012 of 12023)

Baghdad Orphans - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23352-2003May21.html

LOOK MOM, THEY ARE JUST LIKE US. JUST A LITTLE BIT BOMBED...

almarst2002 - 11:37pm May 25, 2003 EST (# 12013 of 12023)

Long lines of corporate supplicants snaked through the atrium of the Ronald Reagan Building yesterday, looking for spoils of war: contracts to help rebuild Iraq. - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23129-2003May21.html

NOT ALL ARE THE LOOSERS.

SOME ARE JUST PURE BLODY WINNERS.

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