New York Times on the Web Forums Science

Missile Defense

Russian military leaders have expressed concern about US plans for a national missile defense system. Will defense technology be limited by possibilities for a strategic imbalance? Is this just SDI all over again?

rshowalter - 05:25pm Apr 27, 2001 EST (#2664 of 2669)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Humor can have much truth in it -- including some of the most fundamental. Some truth that can't be said, except "in jest."

Quotes and Insulting Quotations from Henry Kissenger http://www.insults.net/html/political/henrykissenger.html

"The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer."

"Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad name."

"An Iranian moderate is one that has run out of ammunition."

and one, at once profound and much too simple, taken alone:

"History has so far shown is only two roads to international stabilitiy, equilibrium and domination."

"equilibrium" about what, in detail?

"domination about what, in detail?

rshowalter - 05:30pm Apr 27, 2001 EST (#2665 of 2669)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

If ideas of "equilibrium" and "domination" are applied to the wrong model , that is much simpler than the real case, ugly results, far worse than the best possible, can result.

In peacemaking, Mary Poppins, (perhaps reinforced, from time to time, by Schwartzenegger in his kindergarten teacher role) makes a more impressive, more sophisticated example than Kissenger.

She finds graceful solutions well fit to detailed cases.

Kissenger, too often, saw and sees the world as a simple battleground -- a view that is not only brutal, but also misleading.

A view that often commits to brutal choices -- such as considering the Vietnam War as the "lesser evil." A view that leads to the sort of decisions and actions that occurred in the massacre by Kerrey's Raiders.

Many of Kissenger's students, now leaders in the Bush administration, may sometimes be subject to the same brutal and graceless oversimplifications. And they are tainted with the same war crimes, and the same weight of lies.

Are these advisors insisting on U.S. domination at all costs because they lack the understanding needed for the complexities of the world as it is?

It seems to me that sometimes the answer has to be "yes" -- and that results are both ugly, immoral, dangerous, and much less satisfactory than they could be.

rshowalter - 05:33pm Apr 27, 2001 EST (#2666 of 2669)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

How useful, in detail, is it to talk about the US "dominating" Japan or China ?

How brutally oversimplified does the scale of the model have to be, for the notion to make sense?

Oversimplified enough to produce insane conclusions -- among them, the view that nuclear weapons are unavoidable.

Oversimplified enough that people with this view are far removed from objective, checkable reality.

They can miss, for instance, basic facts, such as the fact the missile defense, at the systems level, has no technical merit at all -- is a fraud.

rshowalter - 05:43pm Apr 27, 2001 EST (#2667 of 2669)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

C.I.A. Opens Files on Hitler by DAVID JOHNSTON http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/27/world/27CND-INTEL.html

" At a news conference at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, several historians said that the files may be most significant because they show that in the aftermath of World War II the American government, primarily military intelligence, knowingly recruited Nazis accused of war crimes for espionage operations against the Soviet Union.

" At the time, the historians said, Americans defended the practice on utilitarian grounds, because of the perceived seriousness of the Soviet threat to the West. Other European governments also used Nazis, and some war criminals sought to use their wartime knowledge of the Soviet Union to ingratiate themselves with the Western powers.

rshowalter - 05:54pm Apr 27, 2001 EST (#2668 of 2669)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Psychwarfare, Casablanca -- and terror http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7a163/0

including the key story, #13.. http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?7@@.ee7a163/13 ...to #23.. http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?7@@.ee7a163/24

note #26 ... http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7a163/25

rshowalter - 05:58pm Apr 27, 2001 EST (#2669 of 2669)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

rshowalter 3/16/01 1:32pm

New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense