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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 - 09:13am Feb 10, 2003 EST (# 8786 of 8787)
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 is a tremendous capabilty for competence, and decency, in the world -

. Of Altruism, Heroism and Evolution's Gifts in the Face of Terror By NATALIE ANGIER http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/18/health/psychology/18ALTR.html

but we are falling agonizingly short, much too often.

A big reason is that it is so easy - indeed, so automatic - so essentially human - for human beings to dismiss each other - demonize each other - call each other "evil" - often with some reason. Almarst dealt with an essential point in 8752 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@93.f35uakNc21C.1707708@.f28e622/10279 - but what he calls "the essence of fascism" is something broader and more serious - a key, essential - and universal tendency that makes for human conflict.

The beginning of Mankind's Inhumanity to Man and Woman - As natural as human goodness? http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7b085/0 includes this - and makes points that I believe need to be much more widely understood.

How could "civilized, aesthetically sensitive, cultured people" ALSO act so monstrously, and with such clear and sophisticated murderous intent.

But is this behavior so strange? Or is it the NATURAL state of people, dealing with outsiders, outsiders who they naturally dehumanize, and deal with as heartless, exploitive predators? Is it civilization and mercy that are the "unnatural" things - the things that have to be taught, and negotiated into being, and strived for?

. . .

To think of OUTSIDERS as people, and not dehumanize them, takes teaching - and a kind of teaching that doesn't always take. But to avoid wars and opressions, and to permit the complex cooperations of civilization, people MUST learn, and must be expected, to deal with OUTSIDERS as human beings.

The most basic human instincts, I fear, go against this. Dealing with an "outsider" the instinct-based reflexes are to dehumanize, to exclude, to withold information from, and to misinform - just the proper things in dealing with an enemy who is a military threat, so that threat can be minimized.

But this pattern of dehumanization and misinformation is also just the thing to make the outsider into either a victim, or a real threat, when more humane responses could have done much better.

We're in the mess we're in. The situation is as it is. It ought to be possible to resolve a great deal - and force has to play a role - with circumstances as they are. Fighting is sometimes necessary. We're dangerous animals - and the United States is not wrong the Saddam, his followers, and the terrorists are dangerous enemies right now.

rshow55 - 09:14am Feb 10, 2003 EST (# 8787 of 8787)
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.

We ought to be able to do a lot better than we're doing. Postponing conflict has become a dominant pattern for the last fifty years - and it works as well as it does - but there are problems that need to be faced.

The Bush administration is not being irresponsible - dialog is going on - and if the mechanisms for getting to workable maps - workable truths that are safe and efficient for people - are defective now - and they are - that can be fixed.

Many things are going surreally wrong - but if we face our problems, a lot could be fixed. We'd have to face up ( in the US - but in many other nations, as well ) to some basic facts about what it means to be human beings. Not all of them pleasant. And some facts about what has happened, what has been done, what risks are. Not all of them pleasant either.

I don't have any question that the US has done things that it has done, and that some stances are as imbalanced as they appear to be to you, almarst .

Even so, why can't Saddam actually agree to disarm - and show enough for that to be credible? Powell, for all the faults that the US has - asks a very good question.

And it seems to me that the United States, faults and all, may be right - on balance - taking Saddam down if he doesn't actually disarm.

Whatever happens - the dialog at the UN, and the adjustments and efforts of concerned nations all over the world - are raising the chances of good outcomes.

We ought to be able to do much better than we've been doing. About a quarter of a million people die a day in the world - many wrenchingly - after wretched circumstances - and we have problems to face and solve. If we faced facts - and mistakes - the world could hardly fail to do much better than it is doing now.

The fact that so much is wrenchingly wrong is painful - but it does mean that there's room for improvement. For instance - the US is committed to what I believe is a trillion dollar system of mistakes. That's real money. Missile Defense involves real problems - long discussed on this thread

http://www.mrshowalter.net/a_md9000s/md9201.htm

http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7a163/352

Some things need to be checked.

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