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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.

commondata - 07:38am Oct 15, 2002 EST (# 4902 of 4905)

PREVENTING BALI, WHAT WE COULD HAVE DONE:

- A new alternative energy strategy, aimed eventually at weaning the west off oil. No longer would the US and others need to manipulate the Middle East just to safeguard their petrol supply. They could let the peoples of the Arab world choose their own governments for once.

- The US would move its troops out of Saudi Arabia, healing one of the sores Bin-Laden most likes to inflame: the presence of "infidels" on holy Muslim soil.

- And Washington would pick up where Clinton left off, devoting serious political muscle to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Genuine movement in that area would instantly rob the Islamists of one of their greatest recruiting pitches.

BUT NO. WHAT WE DID:

- Like the rulers of Orwell's 1984, our leaders have urged us to switch our hatred overnight not from Eastasia to Eurasia but from al-Qaida to Baghdad. Now we are to believe Saddam is the urgent, number one priority.

MEANWHILE BACK IN IRAQ:

In summary, sanctions continue to malnourish and kill. Sanctions are undermining the cultural and educational recovery of Iraq, and will not change its system of governance. Sanctions encourage isolation, alienation and fanaticism. Sanctions destroy the family, undermining women's social and economic advances and encouraging a brain-drain. Sanctions constitute a serious breach of the United Nations charter on human rights and children's rights. Sanctions are a counter-productive, bankrupt concept that has led to unacceptable human suffering.

lchic - 10:42am Oct 15, 2002 EST (# 4903 of 4905)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

FISK
- we are living – whether we know it or not – in a terrifying new age

http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=342461
http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/

commondata - 12:13pm Oct 15, 2002 EST (# 4904 of 4905)

gisterme 10/14/02 6:56pm

And the prime minister of Great Britian said "peace in our time!"

If Iraq had complied with UN resolutions, why did they kick the UN inspectors, including Scott Ritter, out of the country? Do you suppose Saddam was afraid US or British inspectors would spy out some fancy new technology from their baby-milk factories?

Neville Chamberlain's trust in Hitler in 1938 was indeed misplaced. I'm not sure why you draw parallels between that and the Iraqi situation. You're in good company though, the Conservative Monitor makes similar connections in between its rants on abortion, public nudity and the UN.

Maybe if Madelaine Albright hadn't considered a death toll greater that Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined and the death of 5000 children per month "a price worth paying" ...

Maybe if Scott Ritter and his colleagues had been listened to ...

Maybe if the US hadn't considered the whole situation a great intelligence gathering opportunity ... and wanted to stay for good ...

... things could have been resolved in a way that was safer for you and more humane for them. Iraq, of course, maintains that it had complied with UN resolutions, and a lot of other people think they did too.

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