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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 - 08:47pm May 3, 2001 EST (#3204 of 3207)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

On changing the dark side of human nature. Everybody has a dark side. And some of what "good" people do makes you want to turn your head away.

People need to go to the effort of working out conventions that permit them to deal decently with each other. It isn't always the "most natural" or "easiest" thing.

rshowalter - 09:00pm May 3, 2001 EST (#3205 of 3207)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Are we always "the good guys"? rshowalter 3/22/01 11:48am

How much "collateral damage" is justified in hurting the bad guys? -- Some think that half a million kids have died unnecessarily in Iraq because of sanctions. -- Not at all our fault?

Were those two million civilians killed in Korea by our bombing "evil people"?

No regrets about that?

How about justification for using nuclear weapons. Do they only kill "bad folks?"

It helps to count. And have a reasonable regret for carnage.

Something the US seems to lack, as far as the past goes, and something that the US seems to disregard, with respect to the future -- as long as the dead are not Americans, and Americans don't have to be aware of the suffering.

Is that how it is? Your concern for "evil people" interests me.

Who are the evil people?

Should you, for example, know their names before you kill them?

rshowalter - 09:07pm May 3, 2001 EST (#3206 of 3207)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Though I am a backslider myself I have the priviledge of posting a sermon, When the Foundations are Shaking by Dr. James Slatton of the River Road Church (Baptist) in Richmond, Va. rshowalter 2/24/01 9:25am People of secular inclinations might want to skip ahead to 9:27 in the sermon . Thereafter, it is a tribute to a Russian colonel, who kept nuclear war from destroying us all, during the Reagan administration. And a teaching of lessons that most people know, and live well by, that are important to the preservation of our world. I believe that people of enough good will to be human would be interested, and moved, by this part of the sermon, no matter how secular their views. This colonel was not "a bad guy."

rshowalter - 09:13pm May 3, 2001 EST (#3207 of 3207)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

I'll be interested in your thoughts about "evil people" , and especially, about the mechanics of how you make peace with people you deal with as "evil people."

Lincoln, as I recall, said:

"If you look for the bad in people, you will surely find it.

If you find it, does that justify your killing them without qualm? If they happen to be born in the wrong place, does that justify your killing them without qualm, or threatening them with death without qualm?

Isn't carnage something to be regretted, something to work to avoid, even for "tough guys?"

In my view, it is working hard to avoid.

I'd like to hear more about the "evil people" you're so sure about.

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