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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.

rshow55 - 06:50pm Nov 20, 2002 EST (# 5990 of 5995)
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.

A key issue of international law is communication - and there are problems in getting sensible communication with Arab countries. Serious ones.

US relations: A fundamental weakness of diplomacy By Robin Allen http://www.nytimes.com/financialtimes/business/FT1035873428742.html

" Saudi Arabia's controlled press frequently acts as a barometer for official sentiment. So it was all the more startling when one of its leading dailies, Okaz, ran an editorial earlier this month accusing Washington of waging war on terror as a pretext for intimidating other states and threatening to unleash its military power "under the banner of defending its security".

It seems to me that some pretty sensible efforts to make that weakness less are going on.

C.P Snow speaks of

“ . . . the prime importance, in any crisis of action, of being positive, and being able to explain it. It is not so relevant whether you are right or wrong. That is a second-order effect. . . " Science and Government, Ch 11.

Maybe some progress in the task of persuasion - and the task of working out right answers - was made today.

How far are we now from conditions where the world could be a much safer, more just, and more prosperous place?

Perhaps only a few things would have to change. Some of these things, alas, are difficult things that will take courage and honesty to face.

Enough people are involved, and being honest from their own point of view, and careful, that possibilities for safe, good convergence look promising.

Or at least possible.

My guess is that President Bush, and a lot of people around him, have been working and thinking pretty hard.

almarst2002 - 06:50pm Nov 20, 2002 EST (# 5991 of 5995)

"He called me on September 11 - he was very brief," she told the court. "He said he loved me ..." - http://www.guardian.co.uk/september11/story/0,11209,843584,00.html

almarst2002 - 06:57pm Nov 20, 2002 EST (# 5992 of 5995)

"It is not so relevant whether you are right or wrong." - Surely. Particularely it is not you who will pay the price.

"President Bush, and a lot of people around him, have been working and thinking pretty hard." - Probably. The question is - On whoes behalf?

almarst2002 - 07:01pm Nov 20, 2002 EST (# 5993 of 5995)

Obviously Bush would prefere Iraqi capitulation and pro-US "regime change" without a costly war with not entirely predictable outcome.

But the goal is all the same - establishing the US-controlled puppet regime and taking over the Iraqi OIL. With, or better without, the war.

rshow55 - 07:02pm Nov 20, 2002 EST (# 5994 of 5995)
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.

almarst2002 11/20/02 6:57pm - - - primarily on behalf of the United States - from his own political position. (Not surprising, from a political leader) - - but he has opened dialog wide. And lines of discussion are real.

If Iraq does what it has said it will do - there will be no war - but there will be important clarifications of international law - some of which will limit US power in ways that you should advocate especially.

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