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Missile Defense

Russian military leaders have expressed concern about US plans for a national missile defense system. Will defense technology be limited by possibilities for a strategic imbalance? Is this just SDI all over again?

almarst-2001 - 09:51pm Jun 3, 2001 EST (#4479 of 4489)

Pear Harbor - Hiroshima-Nagasaki-Dresden

Payback?

If that as the rest of US military tactic is a payback,

what the WAR CRIME is?

Apparently no such thing exits.

rshowalter - 06:13am Jun 4, 2001 EST (#4480 of 4489)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

War crimes exist. In my personal view, people who deny that -- and deny that their side also can commit war crimes, should be denied any connection to military function, or money from it.

In America, I'm afraid, that's something of a minority view. People outside of America, who may perhaps admire and wish to emulate America in many other ways, should remember this, and should also note how effective the "culture of lying" - in journalism, politics and elsewhere - often is in America.

America often has reason to expect better of the rest of the world. The rest of the world has reason to expect better of us, here.

rshowalter - 06:23am Jun 4, 2001 EST (#4481 of 4489)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

I hope that it is common ground that we can misunderstand each other in many ways, dislike each other for many reasons, and have much about the past between us that displeases us, and still live in peace. .... We don't have to like each other, either now, or in the future, to live in peace.

But it is important that we resolve misunderstandings that could lead to fighting, or that get in the way of complex cooperations that would be in our mutual interests.

We can, I believe, hope to do this.

That would make other reconciliations more likely, and we could be safer and richer, whether those reconciliations ever happened or not.

MD1076 rshowalter 3/16/01 1:11pm ..... MD1077 rshowalter 3/16/01 1:18pm
MD1078 rshowalter 3/16/01 1:23pm ..... MD1079 rshowalter 3/16/01 1:26pm

rshowalter - 06:24am Jun 4, 2001 EST (#4482 of 4489)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

MD1080 rshowalter 3/16/01 1:32pm reads as follows:

" I personally would like a chance to apologize for the actions of my country toward Russia since WWII - but when I say that, I'm speaking for myself, not for others.

" I was once at a lunch, in Madison, with some distinguished Russian educators. I proposed a toast, thanking the Russian people, whose sacrifices in the Great Patriotic War may well have given me, and others of my American generation, a chance to be born. That toast came from my heart. I personally think the conflict between our coutries has been a great human tragedy. But I can only speak for my own feelings here, not for my country."

rshowalter - 06:39am Jun 4, 2001 EST (#4483 of 4489)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Usages cited below trace, and correspond directly, to Nazi usages -- and it is no accident that they do so. We are seeing a degradation of the good things about the United States of America by a conspiracy of people, who are both morally and financially corrupt in many ways, that should concern all Americans of good faith who wish to preserve the country, and the world.

The new jargon uses the techniques of the big lie perfected carefully by the Nazis in great, sophisticated, disciplined detail, and has come to characterize much too much of the discourse in the now radical rather than conservative republican party under the Bush family, a family that has deep ties to Nazis going back the the 1930s and never interrupted.

Here is an excerpt from "The new jargon" http://commons.somewhere.com/rre/2000/RRE.the.new.jargon.html

" We have a serious problem in this country, . . . . -- a cult that conducts its political life in an aggressive and antirational jargon. On many occasions here I have dissected the workings of this jargon, but now I want to focus on the cultivated use of jargon for purposes of emotionally abusing people. My long message about the hate mail that I've received since I started covering the election controversy brought quite a bit of testimony on the matter from people who are distressed at the name-calling, disregard for reality, and all-around dehumanizing scorn that they suffer from the members of this cult. Many of these folks reported feeling all alone with this abuse, and they spoke poignantly about being trapped in overwhelming conservative parts of the country where the cult and its jargon dominate public discussion to the exclusion of everything else.

" Most of these people didn't even think of themselves as liberals -- at least not until they learned, for example, that Al Gore didn't claim to have invented the Internet, wasn't lying when he described his childhood farm chores, didn't grow up in a luxury hotel, didn't falsely claim to have been the model for Love Story, didn't hold a fund-raiser at a Buddhist temple, didn't propose abolishing the automobile, didn't propose to outlaw guns, and so on. They had been genuinely shocked to discover that the cult members had been lying about these things, and they were even more shocked to discover that they and everyone around them had been living in a media bubble whose ranting and raving had shut off the oxygen from even these very simple truths. Some of them described the paralyzing despair that they experienced during the post-election controversy when they found themselves surrounded by angry and irrational people who display no respect for logic."

On matters of life and death, respect for logic and evidence are matters of vital concern.

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