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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.

gisterme - 12:57am Dec 21, 2002 EST (# 6888 of 6897)

manjumicha 12/20/02 5:57pm

"...I think the real unarticulated beef SKs have with US regime of the moment is the reckless attitidue of US hardliners they put up with for the last two years..."

Does that surprise you, manju? This administration refuses to send the NKs billions of US taxpayer dollars in oil, food and nuclear technology to facilitate the continued violation of their agreements with the US. That's hardline all right. I'm sure the NKs liked it a lot better when they were able to violate the agreements and get the money.

Who said you can't have your cake and eat it too? Not president Clinton, that's for sure.

gisterme - 01:25am Dec 21, 2002 EST (# 6889 of 6897)

rshow55 12/20/02 7:42pm

"...Gisterme , unless I'm stopped, I'm going to get the information someone deleted from http://www.mrshowalter.net/bhmath back up on the web..."

Why are you telling me that, Robert? So what?

"...There are some things that merit restriction - and it was only my "hallucination" that you're a ranking official that got me to ( finally ) post rshow55 10/3/02 8:14am and posting connected to http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7a163/364

Taking it all back, are you? Now, that's a gas. At least you're finally confessing your "hallucinations" too. That is progress.

commondata - 05:54am Dec 21, 2002 EST (# 6890 of 6897)

gisterme 12/20/02 10:21pm - Roll out? By that do you mean the decision to deploy some anti-ballistic missile interceptors? How could that have nothing to do with missile defense?

All I mean to say is that I don't think that "missile defense" is the only driver for this system. It doesn't matter that it will be unreliable, easily confused, stratospherically expensive and vanishly unlikely to face a threat from the "axis of evil" or terrorists. It's about controlling large volumes of the sky. It might not hit every missile but hey, most of the stuff you'd want to shoot out of the sky isn't a missile anyway (that's the bit they don't tell you on CNN). Deploying the missile offense system will ignite a new arms race. It's a bad idea.

None of the old Cold War combatants need more offensive weapons. The problem is that we all already have too many of those. The big problem now is how to get rid of them.

It's a pleasure to agree with you.

Perhaps having a defense against particular classes of WMD such as ballistic missiles would make it possible to get rid of all of our own without having to be absolutely sure that no others exist in the world.

Political-military logic would never allow you to give up your deterrent while your defense isn't 100% effective. And this kind of defense can never be 100% effective.

commondata - 06:00am Dec 21, 2002 EST (# 6891 of 6897)

Nice to see you up on the web, rshow.

commondata - 06:02am Dec 21, 2002 EST (# 6892 of 6897)

gisterme 12/20/02 11:28pm - Responsibility for what action, Robert? What action does the rest of the world have to take responsibility for? What are the basic issues in the United States that have to get righted before the rest of the world no longer has to take responsibility for it's own actions?

I listed some of things that the rest of the world has been left responsibility for here and I listed some of the reasons why the U.S. should want to take some responsibility here.

gisterme 12/21/02 12:30am - Logically MD cannot work as a bluff. That's because of the suicide/martyr cult that's at the heart of the threat.

Are you really saying that Al-Quaida poses a serious threat to you with ICBMs? Isn't selling nearly a billion dollars worth of nasty stuff every year to the Saudi regime (the one that presides over the system that produced Bin Laden) more of a threat? Wasn't backing Iraq against Iran with loads of nasty stuff more of a threat? You (the U.S.) keep trying to back the right horse, both for good and selfish reasons, and you keep getting it wrong in a way that destroys millions of lives. Have a look at that 4.6 megabyte list of annual US arms exports and ask yourself whether that could be more of a threat.

Hell would freeze over first. We're about moving forward, not backward, lchic. Perhaps Europe will catch up someday.

You're sounding a little complacent Gisterme; more to do? From http://www.iht.com/articles/78657.html:

Fifteen percent of Americans said they had been unable to afford food at times in the past year — the highest of any advanced economy.

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