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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 - 05:09pm Dec 24, 2002 EST (# 6999 of 7000)
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.

The point is not that we need not fear the North Koreans - nor that we should defer to them. But we should deal with them with more knowledge of what has happened, and the kinds of beings they and we are, than is now assumed.

I have a "thought question." For myself, I don't see an objection to it - but I just suggest it as something to think about - and as something that might possibly be a very effective missile defense, in practice.

Suppose we agreed to discuss a resolution where all U.S. troops left Korea, and where the US did agree to a nonagression pact with North Korea - if there was real peace - and real elimination of Korea's threats to us - both weapons of mass destruction, and missile proliferation?

Not an agreement to do it - but an agreement to talk about it. In enough detail, with enough channels, and finding enough shared space, that closure was at least logically possible. Why would there be weakness in that? How would that be rewarding the North Koreans?

Talk is not cheap. It costs as much as it does. But if people are to find ways to deal with each other as human beings - though trust is not indispensible, communication is. Talk costs something. But some alternatives cost more.

rshow55 - 05:24pm Dec 24, 2002 EST (# 7000 of 7000)
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.

It is my judgement that I am doing just exactly what I promised Bill Casey I'd do - - and I believe that if Casey were alive, he'd be astonished by some things, but very, very pleased - and, right now, quite hopeful.

I think he would also give The New York Times as an institution very high grades - - and might give pretty good grades to many key people in the US government, as well.

Casey was a "closet intellectual" - and I was his "experimental animal" in ways we both understood - and the motivations for the work seemed sufficient to justify a lot - to both of us. In the 1970's, Casey felt that the world would blow up - and if not blow up, be unrelievedly ugly for as far forward as the eye could see - unless some tough problems were solved. I got fingered.

We may be able to do better than Casey feared, if not as well as he sometimes hoped.

Someday At Christmas by Stevie Wonder http://www.webfitz.com/lyrics/Lyrics/xmas/97xmas.html expresses wonderful ideals - and is a great thing to read.

Maybe someday soon - if we keep our heads, and work at it.

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