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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 - 10:37am Sep 8, 2002 EST (# 4233 of 4233)
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.

The paper is superb today. I was struck by much or it, but perhaps especially by

9/11/00: Air Congestion, a Hot Enron and Unhung Chads By ANDRÉS MARTINEZ http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/08/opinion/08SUN2.html

Americans in that fall of 2000 were poised to suffer three cataclysmic shocks over the next year that would challenge their sense of invulnerability.

Thinking about 9/11/00, and chances wasted between then and 9/11/2001 got me to thinking back about wasted chances over a decade.

9/11/1990 the Soviet Union was at the edge of collapse. By late August 1991 it had collapsed.

We didn't have an end game.

Things have gone far, far worse, and terribly differently from what we've hoped. The agony of Russia since that time is a great tragedy - a larger world tragedy than the losses of our 9/11 . And risks, agonies, and lost chances continue.

In many ways, many of the people involved don't know how to do any better.

Some "models" are breaking -- some non-games played out on the basis of old models have gone very badly - and we need to learn to do better.

I've been looking back, and wishing that I could talk (and lchic could talk) to Bill Casey and Steve Kline.

Casey would have been appalled and saddened by much that has happened.

From Powell Defends a First Strike as Iraq Option By JAMES DAO http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/08/international/middleeast/08POWE.html

Secretary Powell, who served as President Reagan's national security adviser and as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under the first President Bush, said his government experiences were like bookends for two major events: the end of the cold war and the start of the campaign against terrorism.

Sept. 11 changed the nature of American diplomacy, he said, by showing the need "to break the old model of super-power conflict, where everything was measured against this chess board of the red side of the map and the blue side of the map, Communism versus democracy."

He said the terrorist attacks shattered cold-war assumptions about America's relations with China and Russia, opening the door to cooperation among the nuclear rivals against a shared enemy: stateless terrorists who are seeking their own biological and nuclear weapons.

"Here was something that had nothing to do with any of the old cold-war models,"

We need models that can work -- we need end games that lead to stable and humanly decent outcomes.

A big part of that will be learning what human limitations are. And learning to deal with them in ways that can work.

4183 rshow55 9/4/02 7:02pm ... 4200 rshow55 9/5/02 9:54pm
4204-5 lchic 9/6/02 5:45am

Smart People Believe Weird Things Rarely does anyone weigh facts before deciding what to believe By Michael Shermer http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0002F4E6-8CF7-1D49-90FB809EC5880000&catID=2 is a wonderful, sobering piece. Setting some conclusions aside, Sermer states some facts that we need to accept about human nature, human logic, and human passions. And accomodate.

We need to learn to check facts, and forsee readily forseeable but unpleasant consequences of "easy" actions - - even though it does not come naturally.

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