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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 - 10:10am Feb 6, 2003 EST (# 8642 of 8644)
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 Case Against Iraq http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/06/opinion/06THU1.html includes this:

"Mr. Powell's presentation was all the more convincing because he dispensed with apocalyptic invocations of a struggle of good and evil and focused on shaping a sober, factual case against Mr. Hussein's regime. It may not have produced a "smoking gun," but it left little question that Mr. Hussein had tried hard to conceal one.

"In response to Mr. Powell's presentation, the foreign ministers of France, Germany, China and Russia called for extending and strengthening the inspection program in Iraq. The French minister, Dominique de Villepin, proposed expanding the number of inspectors and increasing the pressure on Iraq to comply. With the senior inspectors due to make their next report to the Security Council next week, Iraq still has a chance to change course.

"President Bush's decision to dispatch Mr. Powell to present the administration's case before the Security Council showed a wise concern for international opinion. Since Mr. Bush's own address to the U.N. last September, he has kept faith with his commitment to work through the Security Council. As the crisis builds, he should make every possible effort to let the council take the lead.

" The Security Council, the American people and the rest of the world have an obligation to study Mr. Powell's presentation very closely and very seriously. Because the consequences of war are so terrible, and the cost of rebuilding Iraq so great, the United States cannot afford to confront Iraq without broad international support."

Perhaps the United States can afford to confront Iraq without broad international support. It cannot afford to confront Iraq without broad international understanding of what it is doing and why - whether the international community approves or not.

I hope that the international community finds a reasonable way to deal with the issues involving Iraq.

War may be necessary, it seems to me, but if it is - there will have been failures - perhaps some on the part of the United States - surely some on the part of Iraq. If a lot of people die defending Saddam Hussein's hide - and pretenses that are plainly lies - perhaps they cannot escape doing so - but the Iraqi nation - as an entity - will have made a decision to let that happen. With some adjustments that the Iraqi nation, as an entity, ought to be able to make - war would not be necessary.

rshow55 - 10:11am Feb 6, 2003 EST (# 8643 of 8644)
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.

Sometimes, it seems to me that this thread is being useful. Considering everything, the international situation looks hopeful - and there is reasonable hope of stability, it seems to me.

8587 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@93.IGc3aqvO2Wj.1137218@.f28e622/10113

8588 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@93.IGc3aqvO2Wj.1137218@.f28e622/10114

Human solutions that work well in human terms have to fit the details of the case, and again and again - the issues of order, symmetry, and harmony dealt with in the Golden Rule, Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs, and Berle's Laws of power are important - and when arrangements are at tension with these patterns - there are practical and especially human costs. . . . . . If we used techniques prototyped here - so that assertions were set down where people could look at them - there would be less room for deception than there is now.

There is a major problem with "connecting the dots" - with coming to decent, humanly workable decisions - and both the news and this thread are full of examples.

People don't collect the same facts, or judge them or weigh them in the same way, or evaluate them in terms of the same ideas and ideals.

Sometimes - the opposite of the obvious and the opposite of the just are advocated - advocated passionately.

That's going to continue to be an endless source of muddle, agony, and loss - and much larger than it would otherwise have to be - until people get clearer about what it means to be a human being - and some of that clarity is a matter of logic - and logic connected to biological facts.

One fact is simple -and denied logically and emotionally much too often. Human beings do an enormous amount of processing - very much of it is necessarily unconscious and reflexive (reading offers many examples of such processing) and the connection between conscious and unconscious processing is partly voluntary, partly not - and perhaps partly accidental, but surely partly not accidental. We check what we do unconsciously only incompletely - and our emotions are often intensely connected to what we do unconsciously. There is plenty of craziness to go around - and we are coming to a point where we need to face up to human capacities and responsibilities more clearly - and we can.

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