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 [F] 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.


Earliest Messages Previous Messages Recent Messages Outline (7086 previous messages)

lunarchick - 08:07pm Dec 27, 2002 EST (# 7087 of 7100)

A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death. -- Albert Einstein

A man's feet should be planted in his country, but his eyes should survey the world. -- George Santayana

rshow55 - 08:11pm Dec 27, 2002 EST (# 7088 of 7100) Delete Message
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.

North Korea to Expel Inspectors, Drawing White House Criticism By DAVID STOUT http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/27/international/asia/27CND-PREX.html

The notion that the NKs are bad folks, not to be talked to, makes sense in some ways. But we fire bombed and dam bombed their country - killing more than 2 million civilians (in an ancestor worshiping culture) - and from their point of view, we backed Japan - which had done truly terrible things to them. From their point of view, neither WWII or the Korean war may have seemed "fair" - - and these event may not seem so long ago to them.

Nor are the North Koreand likely to have overlooked facts in THREATS TO USE NUCLEAR WEAPONS: The Sixteen Known Nuclear Crises of the Cold War, 1946-1985 by David R. Morgan http://scienceforpeace.sa.utoronto.ca/WorkingGroupsPage/NucWeaponsPage/Documents/ThreatsNucWea.html that most Americans never knew about. Things that most Americans should know about.

Maybe, from their point of view, the evil isn't all on one side.

I wouldn't blame them a lot more than almarst would blame them.

Perspectives differ, after all.

We need to find ways to cut through "conventions" that cut off hope - and make the world uglier, more dangerous, and poorer.

The Bush administration has some approaches that guarantee conflict - - and it may be in both the national interest - and the world interest - both to criticise these standards and find ways around them.

"Good faith" - sometimes - is in the eyes of the beholder. And according to some standards, US patterns of "good faith" - including some set out in detail in the Nunn-Wolfowitz report - look as much like a shell game as "good faith."

The best missile defense may be some talking.

And some hard thinking.

If the United States military loses legitimacy in the mind of most of the world's people - its military force may be significantly less useful than many people think now.

Outside the United States, there are fewer and fewer people, and nations, who assume that the Bush administration is either honest, all knowing, or legitimate - and that is true in the industrial nations - not only the third world. Some of the criticism, it seems to me, is unfair. But not all of it.

MD1999 rshow55 5/4/02 9:39am

lunarchick - 08:24pm Dec 27, 2002 EST (# 7089 of 7100)

T a l k

'The connection between thought and word... is neither preformed nor constant. It emerges in the course of development, and itself evolves' ~~ Vygotsky

http://www.massey.ac.nz/~alock/virtual/wittvyg.htm

~~~~~~

Talk is the exchange of words, thoughts, ideas ... talking is flow and interchange ... talk is moving ground ... talk is finding common ground ... talk between peoples at all levels is important for two cultures to gain common understanding.

rshow55 - 08:43pm Dec 27, 2002 EST (# 7090 of 7100) Delete Message
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.

There are some important things to talk about - to find shared space about. (Click "rshow55" above - and look, among other things, at favorite html's.)

MD727-728 rshow55 3/20/02 7:58pm includes this:

A key reason to want the technical answers is that those answers would move toward larger answers to questions the whole world needs, and is coming to know it needs:

What is the real national interest of the United States? Not just the interest of the military-industrial complex?

and

Can the United States be honest enough and trustworthy enough about what it asks for, and agrees to, so that its interests can be reasonably, efficiently, justly accomodated by the rest of the world?

The technical issues of "missile defense" are a good place to start -- because those technical answers are so clear -- and answering them forces these larger questions to be adressed.

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