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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 - 05:28pm Jun 17, 2003 EST (# 12574 of 12576)
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.

North Korea Faces Growing Pressure on Nuclear Weapons By STEVEN R. WEISMAN http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/17/international/asia/17CND-KORE.html

The Korean situation is a mess, and a tragedy. Eisenhower would have been the last person alive to countenance significant risks to American interests if he could possibly avoid it. And things have degenerated for half a century, in large part because of decisions that Ike made - that may have been right in the large - but were terrible from the perspective of the North Korean people. A sense of history - of what happened - and a sense of tragedy might help us sort some things out now.

11880 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.ym2ZbsJQhPu.1352102@.f28e622/13503 rshow55 5/23/03 8:10am

James Reston put these lines front-and-center on the dustjacket of Deadline . . . 1991:

" I call this book Deadline - defined in my old battered dictionary as "the latest time by which something must be completed" - because meeting newspaper deadlines was what I did for most of my life. It is also what the United States has been doing for the last fifty years - meeting one damn deadline after another: dealing with the depression, beating the Nazis, facing the Communists, controlling the bomb, always at the last minute."

In Korea, solutions are overdue.

I've been working on problems that I was told were important - and believed were important - because they were the key problems that desperately concerned Dwight D. Eisenhower and the best people he had contact with - after he'd left office, defeated on some key things because he didn't have solutions to these problems.

Peace - and to Eisenhower this meant a peace that could accomodate other social systems - was one of the things he had wanted desperately to achieve - and failed to achieve. The Korean situation was part of that. He left a stalemate - feeling that, considering everything, - it was the best he could do. Anyway, the best he did do.

The North Koreans feel betrayed - and are terribly bitter - about the contrast between what they were led to believe when they signed the 1953 armistace and what actually happened.

The full TEXT OF THE KOREAN WAR ARMISTICE AGREEMENT http://news.findlaw.com/nytimes/docs/korea/kwarmagr072753.html July 27, 1953 . . makes interesting, sad reading - the North Koreans had good reason to expect a real peace in months. In large part a humanly workable settlement in North Korea didn't happen because of larger political issues and decisions - many beyond Eisenhower's control, some not.

rshow55 - 05:34pm Jun 17, 2003 EST (# 12575 of 12576)
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.

12104 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.ym2ZbsJQhPu.1352102@.f28e622/13735 Here, from James Reston's Deadline - is a quote from Eisenhower, with a leadup from Reston from about the same time as that Armistice was signed - 1953:

"When Stalin died . . . (Eisenhower) sent the usual messages of condolence to Moscow and then called Emmett Hughes" (the speechwriter )

" Look, I'm tired," the president said, "and I think everyone is tired of just plain indictments of the Soviet regime. I think it would be wrong - in fact, asinine - for me to get up before the world now to make another of those indictments. Instead, just two things matter. What have we got to offer the world? What are we ready to do to improve the chances of peace.

" Here is what I'd like to say: Let's talk straight - no double-talk, no sophisticated political formulas, no slick propaganda devices. Let's spell it out, whatever we really offer . . . withdrawal of troops here or there on both sides . . United Nations-supervised free elections in another place . . . free and uncensored air time for us to talk to the Russian people and for their leaders to talk to us . . and concretely, all that we would hope to do for the economic well-being of other countries . . Here is what we propose. If you - - the Soviet Union - - can improve on it, we want to hear it. . . ."

That was 1953. It sounds hopelessly naive today. Eisenhower was not permitted by circumstances ( or perhaps was not a wise and lucky enough leader ) to sustain these positions - American politics didn't happen that way. This was one of the great disappointments of his Presidency.

For all the mess - and problems on both sides - the North Koreans do have a right to feel that they've been misled - and put in a terrible position - and held there.

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None of this necessarily argues that the US shouldn't interdict - to make sure that the unstable state that North Korea now is doesn't have a chance to act as crazily as it often talks.

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I wish I had a chance to talk to some of the people involved - including leaders. A sense of history, and of tragedy, might help some. Because the rational solutions for the states involved have already been much discussed - and implementing them might only require a great and consistent lowering of emotional temperature - enough so that stable, peaceful solutions in the interests of the peoples involved can be worked out - step by step.

And hold.

It may be impossible to lower the emotional temperature - but it might be worth a try. A sense of history - from different points of view - where people can disagree on what should have happened - but agree on what actually did happen - might help.

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