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.

rshow55 - 10:35am Sep 21, 2002 EST (# 4461 of 4474)
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.

These are "interesting times." A while ago I asked for a chance to give a presentation on a military matter, and wrote this:

"Some explosive instabilities need to be avoided by the people who must make and maintain . . . relevant agreements. The system crafted needs to be workable for what it has to do, have feedback, damping, and dither in the right spots with the right magnitudes. The things that need to be checkable should be.

" Without feedback, damping, and dither in the right spots with the right magnitudes -- a lot of things are unstable - even when those things "look good," "make sense" and there is "good will on all sides."

The points are yet more important when things do not look good , when they do not make sense ; and when good will on all sides is plainly lacking. Unless we get some things in better balance - costs in money, blood, and trouble will be much larger than necessary.

'Wilson's Ghost: Reducing the Risk of Conflict, Killing, and Catastrophe in the 21st Century' by ROBERT S. McNAMARA and JAMES G. BLIGHT http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/29/books/chapters/29-1stmcnam.html makes grisly, interesting reading.

MD1029-1034 rshow55 4/3/02 4:06pm

The same kinds of things are going wrong - again and again. After a point - there really do have to be fights. But about what? If we could get to closure on facts and relations that matter -- there might be many fewer bigger, bloodier fights -- and fewer situations where whole groups (including nations and groups of nations) get stumped, and stay stumped, for long periods of time.

Trusting in the wisdom and balance of the military-industrial complex is not sensible -- even if you take a far more tolerant view of some of their doings than I sometimes do.

The print part of the NYT Magazine on March 10, 2002 led with this:

. "In this week's issue, two lumbering, bureaucratic dinosaurs -- the Coca-Cola Company and the United States armed forces --- wrestle with institutional intertia and an uncertain, occasionally terrifying future. . . . . . . Inside the Pentagon, as Bill Keller explains, the beleaugered theorists in the Pentagon's new Office of Force Transformation are up against defense contractors who "have so thoroughly dispersed their subcontracts" that no congressman can oppose these outdated weapons systems. As the defense budget grows and battlefield tactics shift, our nation's primary strategic enemy, Keller writes, may not turn out to be not Al Queda terrorists but "the vested-interest politics and sclerotic culture governing military affairs.

. The Fighting Next Time http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/10/magazine/10MILITARY.html

(video): http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/international/20020310begwer-video.html

Even if you're for most of the things in "The National Security Strategy of the United States" (and there are good reasons for reservations) it is still true that the system is full of muddles and corruptions - has made lethal practical and moral mistakes - and on issues of procurement, including missile defense - is making huge mistakes - of trillions of dollars. Including some I was assigned to address - and have.

If enough people recognized how strange our military-industrial-political complex is, and how many assumptions - some horrible, some silly, it is based on - - the United States, and other countries, might come to some better decisions.

rshow55 - 10:35am Sep 21, 2002 EST (# 4462 of 4474)
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.

One doesn't have to doubt that the administration sometimes sees some things straight. But often enough, they do things that make you want to turn your head away. With the stakes now, we shouldn't turn away - people should look carefully. There are tens or hundreds of millions of lives at stake - both in terms of how lives are lived, and how they end.

The "missile defense" fraud-farce-boondoggle involves an especially good body of facts to connect, because so many key things are so clear -- and so many key lies and evasions have been made to Americans and the leaders of other nations. MD1075-76 rshow55 4/4/02 1:20pm

The Bush administration is right about some things -- in some limited ways.

Almarst and lchic are, too.

The costs of getting some key questions far clearer than they now are are tiny compared to the stakes.

(12 following messages)

New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense