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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.

lchic - 01:26pm Sep 12, 2002 EST (# 4274 of 4279)

September 11, 2002 - Terror Debate The planes that carried out al- Qa`ida`s terrorist attack 12 months ago triggered not only a chain of suffering and grief but also a furious international debate. Was there a legitimate grievance driving the terrorists? What kind of response was justified? Two thinkers who enter the debate from opposite ends, join us tonight. From London, writer Tariq Ali, a stringent critic of the US and its foreign policy, and from Philadelphia, American policy specialist, Daniel Pipes who believes that Islamism, like Fascism and Communism before it, must be defeated.

JANA WENDT: Tariq Ali and Daniel Pipes, welcome to you both. Tariq Ali, what do you believe is the historical significance of what happened on September 11? TARIQ ALI, WRITER: Well, the historical significance is that it's the first time since 1812 that the American mainland has been subjected to violence by persons from outside. I don't think it was an act of war, but it certainly was a very serious act of terror and its significance lies in, for me, not so much in the actual effects it had - 'cause, economically and militarily, it was even less than a pinprick. I mean, you can't challenge the might of the United States by actions of this sort. The psychological impact, of course, went much, much deeper but, in reality, what has happened is that the United States Administration has decided quite openly and blatantly to use the events of September 11 to remap the world according to their own needs and that, I think, is where the significance of September 11 will lie when historians discuss it in 10, 20, 30 years time.

JANA WENDT: Well, Daniel Pipes, what do you think of that assessment? Has it completely changed the way that the United States is conducting itself in the world?

DANIEL PIPES, US POLICY SPECIALIST: No, Jana, very far from a complete change. To me, the significance of September 11 is that the war that militant Islam had declared on the US back in 1979 when Ayatollah Khomeini came to power and said, "Death to America," the war that then took some 800 lives in the course of the many, many attacks on Americans, the war which was not really noticed, finally on September 11, 2001, became noticed. There could have been many more deaths in a small sort of way without it being noted, but the largeness of this event, the traumatic nature of the day, that caused Americans for the first time to sit up and take notice, that they had an enemy that had declared war and who was going to do all that it could to harm and potentially even destroy the United States.

TARIQ ALI: Well, I don't accept this for a moment. Basically, what Daniel Pipes is referring to is the victory of the clerics in Iran after a big mass upheaval which toppled a pretty much universally hated despotic ruler in that country, who was seen as having been put on his throne by the United States after a previous attempt to overthrow him by secular politicians had failed in the '50s. So it wasn't militant Islam particularly. It was the voice of the Iranians and because - I give you an example. At the same time as supposedly militant Islam had declared war on the United States, the United States was, in fact, collaborating with sections of militant Islam to fight the Russians in Afghanistan, including the groups which currently carried out the attacks on the United States were allies then.

DANIEL PIPES: You're just corroborating my point that Americans before 9/11 were not aware that militant Islam had declared war on them and were therefore happy to collaborate with some elements while being attacked by others. That would be much less likely today.

JANA WENDT: OK, I want to ask you both why you believe that those attacks on September 11 did take place when they took place? Tariq Ali?

TARIQ ALI: Well, I think that the organisation which carried out these attacks had made no secret of the fact for some years previously that it was ta

lchic - 01:27pm Sep 12, 2002 EST (# 4275 of 4279)

Infant mortality - http://www.economist.com/images/20020907/CIN568.gif

mazza9 - 02:14pm Sep 12, 2002 EST (# 4276 of 4279)
"Quae cum ita sunt" Caesar's Gallic Commentaries

lchic:

I can only think of one justification for killing another human being. When that person violates the right to life, (the first unalienable right specified in our constitution), then their life should be forfeit. To say that a 6 year old child deserves to die for the "sins of the father" is stone age thinking. The rule of the jungle or the strongest right arm is inappropriate for the 21st Century.

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