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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?

Read Debates, a new Web-only feature culled from Readers' Opinions, published every Thursday.

rshow55 - 03:39pm Feb 17, 2002 EST (#11597 of 11603)

You're right, of course. She would be one . One of many. Tragedies, outrages, mistakes, and enough ugliness to make one want to turn one's head away on both sides.

For that reason, talk is not cheap.

Talk is necessary -- enough talk so that people, even when they hate each other, even when they cannot forgive each other, can still get enough common ground so that they can come to accomodations that permit peaceful, workable resolutions in human terms.

Restricting conversation, and deflecting, are just the wrong things to do. Sometimes - usually, when situations are complicated and conflict is real, truth is the only hope.

Fine minds, committed to truth and honest dealing, respectful of fact, and able to express ideas clearly, may be worth an unlimited number of obfuscationists, even when those obfuscationists are officers of state.

Friedman's communication with the Saudi leader is constructive. Mazza, your deflection, characteristically, is not.

lchic - 05:43pm Feb 17, 2002 EST (#11598 of 11603)

This guy was a good talker: Churchill

Churchill Nobel 1953
http://www.brothersjudd.com/webpage/nobelprizetxt.htm

Iron curtain
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/churchill-iron.html
'I repulse the idea that a new war is inevitable' Sir WC

Funeral -
http://www.winstonchurchill.org/ffhplum4.htm

State Funeral 30 Jan 1965
http://www.havengore.com/havewsc.htm

Tips for living the abundant life :
http://www3.bc.sympatico.ca/st_simons/digest30.htm

I'm sure were he around Winston would have 'thoughts' as to a VISION for the future of America and The World.

Showalter if I asked you
'What is America's Vision for the next few decades? - Would there be one?'

rshow55 - 08:08pm Feb 17, 2002 EST (#11599 of 11603)

lchic asks: "'What is America's Vision for the next few decades? - Would there be one?"

There needs to be one --- one shared, in essentials, by the whole American people. That vision has to be consistent with the values, and emotions, and knowledge, of Americans as a people - a very diverse, tolerant, multiply gifted people.

For safety, and stability, that vision has to be based on emotions, and aesthetics, and sound knowledge, true knowledge about the past. And sound judgement about what can be hoped for in the future.

America's vision would have to fit the values and emotions that we are willing to admit to and defend in public.

Lchic , there are a lot of people I'd like to ask your question. I'd like to ask President Bush, and his advisors. And I'd like to ask many honorable politicians. One I'd be particularly interested in would be Senator Zell Miller , who wrote The Democratic Party's Southern Problem http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/04/opinion/04MILL.html a piece where he talked, with such grounded sophistication, about values , and trust in an important section of the United States.

The answers to lchic's question wouldn't be easy -- and not too specific. But for stability, they couldn't be based on lies, or distortions. Because the power of America depends, for unchangeable reasons, on ideas, and not just on material things.

MD11587 rshow55 2/16/02 7:24pm

rshow55 - 08:10pm Feb 17, 2002 EST (#11600 of 11603)

Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote something that was idealistic but practical, too.

" Today, we are faced with the pre-eminent fact that, if civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships --- the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together and work together in the same world, at peace."

MD11155 rshow55 1/31/02 7:11pm

Human relations that are stable, peaceful, and productive must be based on shared knowledge -- on shared truths - - not on conversations closed off, and not on lies.

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