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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 - 12:15pm Feb 17, 2003 EST (# 9038 of 9041)
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 was impressed and moved by an Op-ed Ad today

. A Plea For Reflection 8800 poets and counting: http://poetsagainstthewar.org/

It made me think about anoter admirable Op-Ed ad - showing how broad and distinguished support for nuclear disarmament is in the United States:

" Signatories of the Global Security Institute appeal of October 2, 2000 http://www.mrshowalter.net/a_md00100s/md374.htm

How is it, so often, that the reasonable and the true is "somehow too weak?" If we knew, human hope would be stronger. Today, I'm feeling optimistic, so it seems a good time to think about lost chances - and human limitations. Almarst has posted some things about Secretary Powell that argue that he's no angel - but it seems worth remembering what he said, quoted from the following radio transcript:

"DOES THE UNITED STATES NEED NUCLEAR WEAPONS?" http://www.cdi.org/adm/Transcripts/721/ 1994, Center for Defense Information

NARRATOR: General Colin Powell, while chairman of the Pentagon Joint Chiefs of Staff, indicated the military useless-ness of nuclear weapons. According to General Powell, nuclear weapons are "a wasted investment in a military capability that is limited in political or military utility." [23 September 1993]

General COLIN POWELL (10 June 1993, at Harvard University):

"Under agreements that we have negotiated just over the past few years and will come into effect by the end of the decade, we are bringing the number of our nuclear warheads down from over 20,000 when I became chairman four years ago to just over 5000. And today I can declare my hope and declare it from the bottom of my heart that we will eventually see the time when that number of nuclear weapons is down to zero and the world is a much better place."

Admiral TURNER:

"In July of 1992, General Powell, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stated that if we had 3500 nuclear weapons, warheads, we would be perfectly safe even if the Soviet Union had 20,000. Let's go to 3500 tomorrow, regardless of what the Russians do. And then as they come down, well, let's us go to 1000. Let's lead the pack downward, because we want to get to zero. "

Since http://www.cdi.org/adm/Transcripts/721/ - - there has been much discussion about disarmament - but what has happened is far, far worse - far far less reasonable than what one would have expected. In the face of a reasonable request for a reasonable surrender of power - ways were found to continue patterns of mass murder.

The details of how this happened are partly open - many of them were followed on this thread - but some of the details are classified. This is clear. The rejection of real nuclear disarmament by the Bush administration didn't happen by accident.

rshow55 - 12:19pm Feb 17, 2003 EST (# 9039 of 9041)
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.

Was the degree of failure on disarmament we've seen logical ?

What can the term logic possibly mean, when it applies to human beings?.

If we were clearer about that - clearer about some key things about what it means to be a human being - a great deal would become possible.

People "collect the dots" differently, and form patterns - "connect the dots" differently, as well. Both the collection and the connection process are tremendously impressive in their complexity - but the process isn't anything at all like the "logic" we think people have when we trust their judgement - and think we have when we trust our own.

People attend to what comes to their attention - and their attention is largely selective. People "connect" the patterns that, one way or another, are comfortable for them - in a real sense, "believe what they want to believe."

8802 cites Spending Spree at the Pentagon http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/10/opinion/10MON1.html and asks a key question:

" is there anything in the way of logic or evidence that will get "members of the team" in the military-industrial complex (including NASA) to admit to anything that might significantly change program priorities - or devalue programs. The questions make a big difference when the issue is money and status. Similar big differences - plus additional differences of life and death, when the issue is war.

If people only believe what they want to believe - and with people's positions and interests so different - is there any hope of agreement about things that matter?

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