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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 - 09:14am Sep 12, 2002 EST (# 4273 of 4273)
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.

We're missing some things that matter a great deal. Saddam has some similarities to Hitler, and so does the context, but there are big differences, too.

The human race is in a struggle to accomodate modernity - including science, engineering, and modern sociotechnical systems -- with the human condition, and humane values. Including religious values. Including national and tribe values. In a way that can work, from childhood up - a way that works emotionally, practically - comfortably - sustainably. That struggle's gone on a long time - for centuries in the west. That struggle has been HARD for us, and remains so.

That same struggle is especially hard for the people of the Islamic nations, locked into, ambivalently trying to emerge from, a medieval mind-set that has shut out challenges rather than respond to them since the 14th century. Enriched in the last century with a windfall of oil wealth that cannot last - unable to block out the effects of mass communication and technology - the islamic world is full of tensions - some of them desperate tensions. They are trying, often, to make accommodations. They are, too often, paralyzed by lies and deference to false assumptions.

That can happen to us, too.

Doing nothing is not an option. But we have to be sensible in what we do. History is full of craziness. Is the United States making some crazy decisions now - making a bad situation, which needs to be made better, much worse?

We're not in a reprise of WWII.

Anger at U.S. Said to Be at New High By JANE PERLEZ http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/11/international/middleeast/11ARAB.html

Pakistan Wants No Part in an Attack on Iraq By PATRICK E. TYLER http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/12/international/asia/12MUSH.html

Foreigners Ache for U.S., but Also Take Issue With It By FRANK BRUNI http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/11/international/12WORLD.html

http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7a163/303 To sort out problems, including problems of peace (and the smaller related muddles of the missile defense boongoggle) people have to face the truth, tell the truth, and avoid misinformation. When right answers really count, they have to "connect the dots" MD1054 rshow55 4/4/02 7:54am so that patterns emerge -- and to check those patterns.

MD3350 rshow55 7/30/02 8:33pm includes a number of references to postings in the TALK thread Psychwarfare, Casablanca -- and terror . . and includes this:

"It would be worth money, a great deal of safety, and worth honor too for leaders of nation states , all over the world, to ask that some key things about the history of the Cold War be checked. .

I meant checked in public , under circumstances where closure on reality might reasonably be possible. Patterns set out and discussed at length on this thread might be useful. 1075-76 rshow55 4/4/02 1:20pm

"Lies are unstable. Because they are unstable, there is a great deal of hope, if people show some reasonable courage.

The Islamic nations, much too often, are paralyzed by lies. So are we in America, in some ways that matter. But we are in a mess, and some of the problems, though simple, are buried deeply. A time comes when the truth is not just the best hope - but for real solutions, the only hope.

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