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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 - 03:59pm Jan 26, 2003 EST (# 8126 of 8133)
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.

Here are two important pieces - urging caution.

The Race to War http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/26/opinion/26SUN1.html

Saddam Hussein obviously deserves toppling, but to go it alone is to court disaster.

Thinking About Iraq (II) By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/26/opinion/26FRIE.html

Why conservative advocates of ousting Saddam underestimate the risks, and how we should do it if we have no other choice.

Some of the most fundamental problems with Iraq exist because Iraq is an example of an Islamic country that made an attempt (with some coaching from us) to accomodate modernity on the basis of terror and a cult of personality. The whole of the Arab world now has, even with oil, a GDP less than that of Spain - and if you subtract oil - a geographical-economic windfall that can't last - the Arab countries are among the most backward, corrupt, and humanly unsatisfactory countries in the whole world.

It seems to me that the West - and especially Brits and Americans (especially Texans associated with the oil business) have plenty of reasons to dispise the whole Arab world. Good reasons, by my own personal standards, in many cases. Iraq has many of the characteristics we most dispise in high degree.

That shouldn't make us forget the assurances we have already given the Security Council of the UN. We said if Saddam really disarms - we won't invade. On the basis of credible evidence that anyone can believe on any basis besides blind faith in the Bush administration and the CIA - Saddam's Iraq seems to have accomodated UN demands impressively well - given the troubles the regime has.

My main objection to war with Iraq now isn't so different from the objections of http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/26/opinion/26SUN1.html and http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/26/opinion/26FRIE.html - - except that I think the probability of success - based on current patterns - is much less than the NYT and Friedman seem to think it is - unless we are much clearer about the differences we have with the Islamic countries - and much more willing to work - long, hard, and honestly - to find ways so that the Islamic world can really accomodate modernity. It shouldn't be so very difficult - but it isn't something that can be accomodated by something so logically "easy" as a war. We need to understand more than we do - be honest with ourselves - and expect some honest accomodations from Islam, as well.

rshow55 - 04:03pm Jan 26, 2003 EST (# 8127 of 8133)
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.

As Stoning Case Proceeds, Nigeria Stands Trial By SOMINI SENGUPTA http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/26/international/26NIGE.html

"As unkind as death by stoning might seem, the grand khadi said, such a punishment is necessary to uphold the sanctity of marriage. Under God's law, he said, marriage was created for a reason: to produce children one can call one's own.

""Islamic law prescribes that adultery and fornication are offenses that carry punishment," he explained. "If this girl were a spinster, if she had never married, they would never sentence her to death. They would sentence her to 100 lashes of the cane."

Why?

"Only Allah knows,

Should men proved to be not the biological parent have to support a child regardless? --Guardian Talk Nov 2000 http://www.mrshowalter.net/a_md01000s/SupBast.htm adresses concerns that are quite real in the West, as well as in the Islamic nations, and suggests that, with the basic definition of marriage in Islam a bonding of women to specific men to assure paternity - new genetic techniques, combined with abortion - may offer an alternative to a restriction of women in Islam that is now strangling Islamic cultures - and producing many losses and horrors.

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