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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.

rshowalter - 06:04pm May 25, 2001 EST (#4210 of 11756)
Robert Showalter mrshowalter@thedawn.com

SN1342: markk46b "Science in the News" 8/23/00 2:44am ... SN1343: rshowalt "Science in the News" 8/23/00 7:31am
" ....there's a phrase that I read once. Three words.

" Hitler went unchecked. "

The context was political and military. But facts and ideas went unchecked too. Hitler subverted an entire society based on nonsense and lies, many ornately detailed, and destroyed much of the world in doing so. He hoped, in the senses that matter to most of us, to destroy the whole world. In the ways that mattered, he wasn't effectively checked at the level of ideas.

In the preface to Brecht's Galileo , there's something like this.

" It takes courage to face the fact that sometimes the truth is defeated because the truth is, somehow, too weak."

I find the idea that truth can be "somehow, too weak" haunting.

We need techniques and conventions that make it stronger.

rshowalter - 06:05pm May 25, 2001 EST (#4211 of 11756)
Robert Showalter mrshowalter@thedawn.com

Notions of responsibility could be clarified, too: SN1422: rshowalter "Science in the News" 8/29/00 7:26am ....
And expository poem: SN1423- 1426

SN1427: rshowalter "Science in the News" 8/29/00 8:03am

" Scientific evidence, combined with other evidence and persuasive work, may in the future help establish this truth, which has been, somehow, too weak, on a firmer basis than has been done so far. "

- - -

In the particular context, at a time when my humanity was in doubt, I personally much appreciated comments 1431: pgunkel1 "Science in the News" 8/29/00 10:45pm ... and 1432: analytech_1981 "Science in the News" 8/30/00 12:00am

rshowalter - 06:34pm May 25, 2001 EST (#4212 of 11756)
Robert Showalter mrshowalter@thedawn.com

Some americans often look bad to some other people, for reasons that should be understood.

3419: rshowalter 5/7/01 2:10pm .... 3422: rshowalter 5/7/01 3:45pm

some things that are now closer to "common ground" are essential for working things out. 3424: rshowalter 5/7/01 4:11pm .... 3425: rshowalter 5/7/01 4:17pm
3426: rshowalter 5/7/01 4:18pm

" a higher level of good will than that expressed needs to be worked out before "missile defense" will be looked on as benign."

If Americans could see how they look to some other people, they could deal with situations they are now blind to, and there would be new possibilities for progress toward stability and peace.

At the same time, circumstances where Americans are much misunderstood, unfairly misunderstood, by almarst and others, could be set right, in everybody's interest.

rshowalter - 06:40pm May 25, 2001 EST (#4213 of 11756)
Robert Showalter mrshowalter@thedawn.com

3424: rshowalter 5/7/01 4:11pm comes into somewhat sharper focus in light of CIA's Worst-Kept Secret - http://www.consortiumnews.com/051601a.html

Some of America's past policies are considerably worse than the American people themselves.

I think there are some very important, and good things about the way Americans interact and live that almarst systematically misunderstands. But he has some reasons for feeling as he does.

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