New York Times on the Web Forums Science

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.

mazza9 - 04:44pm Sep 22, 2003 EST (# 13852 of 13875)
"Quae cum ita sunt" Caesar's Gallic Commentaries

Manjumica20:

I supposed that my response to the bellicose rantings of Kim Il Jung sound warlike. Let me assure you that I don't like that option.

I served in SAC during the Cold War! I came from the duck and cover generation. I remember growing up in Newark NJ and seeing the Anitaircraft guns in Branch Brook Park. Their goal was to shoot down incoming nuclear bombers. They would be replaced by Bomarcs and Nikes. NY City was the target and it wasn't fun living on the bulls eye. Servicing in North Dakota in the eary 70s was also living on a bull eye. You have no idea what it was like to be at Minot on the night President Nixon mined Haiphong Harbour. I was at the base theater when the klaxon went off. I ran to the doors and heard the B-52 engines start up and then they began to taxi.

I don't like nuclear war and understand, in deep detail, what a nuclear exchange would create. So this dictator thinks he can rattle sabers and demand fealty and compensation for his regime. I don't think so! If I had a magic wand then all the "bad guys" would drop dead and the men, women, and children of that despotic regime would be free. Sometimes the end justifies the means.

rshow55 - 04:48pm Sep 22, 2003 EST (# 13853 of 13875)
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.

" Sometimes the end justifies the means. "

A slight twist - from Robert Moses, I think.

"If the end doesn't justify the means - what could?"

The judgement of the Bush administration is subject to serious question.

jorian319 - 04:49pm Sep 22, 2003 EST (# 13854 of 13875)

Maybe the star wars defense concept could be turned to a space-based laser capable of taking out individuals?

cantabb - 05:12pm Sep 22, 2003 EST (# 13855 of 13875)

http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?1@13.42TIbay2HeE.1251171@.f28e622/15553 [rshow55]

More of the same !

I think that my "unfocused ramblings" are pretty focused.

And, therein lies most of the problem.

One can't even begin to resolve any problem, unless one is aware there exists ONE and CAN recognize it when pointed out, not once but repeatedly.

.... but it does seem clear that you and I disagree about what fairness is. What balance is. What matters in context.

What gave you THAT idea, when I never raised or discussed "fairness," and "balance" on this matter. Did you "check" my posts ?

We have different priorities.

We ALL have different "priorities." NYT probably had its own too with regard to THIS forum under "Science" [see Forum header].

I'd suggest clicking the links - following the clicks, and looking at the context - but that's just personal preference.

My "preference" is to try to understand the world as it really is -- and NOT the world (or the forum/its purpose/etc) according to someone else. IF I ever were interested in more of circular self-references to the self-created confusion, I might think about it.

Unfocused ramblings, cliches and fuzzy generalities don't lead to a meaningful discussion, even when we know exactly what the problem really is.

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New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense