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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 (8829 previous messages)

rshow55 - 03:12pm Feb 12, 2003 EST (# 8830 of 8833) 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.

I've been hoping the President Bush will go down in history as one of the greatest presidents the US has had - as the president who took the actions that resulted in the solution of big problems the world has faced - problems that have greatly increased human risks and costs for decades.

It isn't that I've hoped that solutions would occur according to Bush's exact specifications - power doesn't work that way. Adolf Berle makes a basic point (in a dated sexist usage Lunarchick and C. Rice might object to - worth quoting anyway.)

"One impact of power holding on the power holder is his discovery that the power act, the direction of an event, causes surprisingly unpredictable consequences. What it signifies to the men affected - a matter determined by their emotions and their minds - is ultimately more causitive than the thing done. That causation cannot be controlled - certainly not by him. The power to cause an event has scant relation to capacity to control the feelings and opinions of men about the thing done, or assure their adherence to a larger plan.

"The instinct for power consequently is likely to have more reach than grasp.

I've spoken of basic human needs - 5724 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@28.oaNzayXL3KL.318955@.f28e622/7139 and especially Berle's Laws of Power - 5725 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@28.oaNzayXL3KL.318955@.f28e622/7140

Berle's laws are all important - but Rule Two: Power is invariably personal seems worth emphasizing now.

Some solutions may seem obvious - and frustratingly easy - yet elusive. Wizard's Chess http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/05/opinion/05SUN1.html sets out key problems - and from where we are - it doesn't seem like it should take a wizard to see solutions to them.

Washington must simultaneously cope with three separate . . . threats — from Iraq, from North Korea and from the threat of reconstituted international terrorist networks.

Given resources available - and solutions already suggested and discussed - why aren't these solutions obvious - and why aren't they achieved?

A problem has to do with the logic by which people have to live. A logic of power. It is much too easy to ask Bush, and his administration, as human power holders - to do things that human power holders essentially never do - especially abdicate their power. It is much too easy to ask Hussien, and his administration to do things that, right or wrong, human power holders essentially never do - and aren't supposed to do. Berle points out (p 81) that "Tampering with power outside the institutions on which it is based may occasionally be justified. But, prima facie, it is a political offense." And something that power holders cannot reasonably be expected to do.

Power holders have to exercise the power that they actually have - and ask other power holders to do things that they can actually do.

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