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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 - 07:49pm Jun 8, 2003 EST (# 12405 of 12412)
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.

Dwight D. Eisenhower was a great leader - the greatest technocrat-soldier, the greatest logistician, and one of the greatest strategists and tacticians that the country has ever had. Because of the time he was born, and his assignments, he was close to people (notably Douglas MacArthur) who had faced physical danger and handled it well. Eisenhower had not. It bothered him.

My work under Eisenhower was as illicit, in military protocol terms, and in political terms, as Mimi Fehnstock's relation to Kennedy was in terms of domestic protocols - and especially because I had the honor to work on problems where Eisenhower had superbly informed doubts - where Eisenhower had responsible, calibrated, carefully informed fears that needed to be faced in the only way they could be faced - by solving problems. Neither Fehnstock's affair with Kennedy, nor my work under Eisenhower, could have happened without organizational accomodations - hers among the White House staff and reporters - mine involving a few people at Cornell, in Gettysburg, at Ft. Dietrick, and a few officers who could fly small planes. (Dietrick and Gettysburg are about an hour's drive apart, and both have servicable airstrips. )

It was my job , in some senses, to be insubordinate - and to be that insubordinate in some ways - I had to be completely, clearly, perfectly subordinate in others.

It was my job to be very intellectual - and intellectually "insubordinate" - and to be that intellectually insubordinate, I had to show some military virtues. If I was going to "claim to be smarter than everybody else" I had to be polite about it - and touger than everybody else, as well. I had to show not only courage, the ability to face danger - but the ability to prevail by clear military standards under combat circumstances, insofar as these could be arranged, and fit with the jobs I had to do.

Eisenhower knew that I'd been in some fights - including a successful one where I took some money from a professional combat instructor - and some with groups. He valued that background for military and negotiating reasons - in addition to some mathematical reasons related to tactical and strategic problems that were of concern.

Eisenhower was interested in the geometry and dynamics of combat of all kinds, and at every level. At a rigorous intellectual level that everyone of his science advisors would have been bound to respect. He was a great, and very tough, teacher.

rshow55 - 07:53pm Jun 8, 2003 EST (# 12406 of 12412)
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.

At our first meeting, we discussed a good deal - and some dealt with issues of courage. I was expected to be able to face, and defeat, any West Point cadet, and any physical combat instructor in the Army - in a few kinds of hand-to-hand combat. I had to prove my physical competence, to the professional satisfaction of some combat instructors. (I had occasion to do that later with movie cameras running, giving a lecture on combat tactics in engagements with knives periodically as the movie was made over a very strenuous day.) In some ways my physical combat work was the hardest part of my job - but in some ways the most enjoyable. And General Eisenhower insisted on that as a core military competence I had to show.

General Eisenhower wanted me to come up with answers that were actually useful from a military perspective - and for the (fundamentally related) job of figuring out how to come up with a lasting peace.

And the related job of figuring out how America could be, in some unavoidable ways, a "command economy" while also maintaining the freedoms and excellences of a free counry. (I'd written a paper with some connections to those problems as an intern at Ernst and Ernst the summer of 1967, and he had read it. )

America had to be both a competent command economy and a free democracy. It was a "contradiction" that he felt we had to find a way to sustain workably and gracefully. I think he was right about that. We haven't dealt with is workably and gracefully yet, and need to.

lchic - 07:55pm Jun 8, 2003 EST (# 12407 of 12412)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

Effective Truth - the moment of

http://www.kumc.edu/SAH/OTEd/jradel/Preparing_talks/170.html

lchic - 08:01pm Jun 8, 2003 EST (# 12408 of 12412)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

Lasting Peace : When elephants fight

it's the grass that suffers

http://www.wagingpeace.org/articles/02.03/0327wellsforlasting.htm

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