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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 - 07:27am Jun 13, 2003 EST (# 12518 of 12519)
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.

lchic is superb. She'd make one of the greatest briefers of all time, if she had a staff.

America's Record on Nation Building By JAMES DOBBINS and SETH G. JONES http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/13/opinion/13OPAR.html is excellent, and the popup image connected to it - beautifully presented in the paper - is exemplary. And worth some time and thought - a great graphic.

Dobbins' and Jones' piece starts:

Washington has long invested heavily in its armed forces' ability to fight wars, and has seen a remarkable return on that investment. Yet there has been no comparable progression in American competence at stabilizing and rebuilding societies emerging from tyranny and war.

" After World War II, the United States rebuilt Germany and Japan with great success. Against this admittedly very high standard, the country's performance in the 1990's began abysmally, and improved only slowly.

If it has improved at all.

Things that Eisenhower and other top leaders knew, and that American bureacracies used to do well - have degraded. But there were deep unsolved problems then.

12079 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.74habIBWej8.230868@.f28e622/13710

In 1952, when General of the Army Dwight David Eisenhower ran for president (he hadn't cared much whether he ran as a Democrat or a Republican) he had clear objectives.

He wanted to combine the high achievements in administration and technocratic management that the US had up and running - with democracy and American ideals - in the service of a common good the country agreed on.

He wanted to diffuse the high achievements in administration and technocratic management that the US had up and running, in the service of world welfare, world prosperity, and world peace, and to meet the competition of totalitarian systems...

Eisenhower believed in the slogan:

" Be sure you're right. THEN go ahead."

And he spent much of his presidency stumped - not able to move on key challenges becasue he knew he didn't have good enough answers. Working hard and working his people hard. He talked to me about what he was stumped about. The main things I've worked out are on this board already - diffused, because this thread, much like fencing, has some obligatory parrying.

12093 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.74habIBWej8.230868@.f28e622/13724

My judgement is that every single "show-stopper" stumper problem that Eisenhower and his top people knew they had - is now solved in an analytic sense - and ripe to be solved in a practical - widely diffused way.

12255 <a href="/webin/WebX?13@13.74habIBWej8.230868@.f28e622/13895">rshow55 5/31/03 9:39am</a>

. Could I give the "briefing" I would have liked to have given Eisenhower (or Clinton, or Bush) in public - to anybody who happened to be interested, now?..

Within the limitations of this very powerful but cumbersome format - which has all the defects and power of pretrial discovery (and some new defects and power that come with the internet form) I'm setting out what I know .

But there are difficulties - security problems that I've been "chipping away" at for a long time. It seems to me that there's progress - but that many lives and many resources have been wasted because I've been as restricted as I've been.

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New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense