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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?

rshowalt - 10:10am Jul 30, 2001 EST (#7604 of 7770)

Moral education and ethics are important. But not just for soldiers - or even primarily for soldiers.

A central issue is the moral sense of the population of the world at large, and especially of influential people.

Human beings, either adults or children, who have already murdered, or joined groups of murderers, or who have trained, for years, for mass murder, or associated intimately with those who have, are the hardest to restrain.

Though trying to have them restrain themselves is important.

The idea that deaths by military action are unfortunate, and to be actively avoided, and that organized murder is to be discouraged, must be much more widely held.

People "turn a blind eye" much too easily. And actively look for more decent accomodations too seldom.

The press, which presents an agenda that passes before people's eyes, that people consider, has a big role here, or should.

lunarchick - 10:13am Jul 30, 2001 EST (#7605 of 7770)
lunarchick@www.com

Gearing up this way for the Commonwealth Conference - protesters are noting that Human Rights are not what they should be in Malaysia, Zambia .. etc ..

No wonder Lizzy wears white gloves for handshaking!

lunarchick - 10:24am Jul 30, 2001 EST (#7606 of 7770)
lunarchick@www.com

Hard for people genrally to know - in advance, that's when they are young - if they'll be influential. Therefore the moral education has to be universal - just in case someone does get to be influential .. in any sphere of life.

Reality TV has been the world rage - the morality factor was 'high', they were intimidated and inhibited to some degree, when they were 'filmed' constantly. http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/ see 'Reality Check'

Nite!

rshowalt - 10:36am Jul 30, 2001 EST (#7607 of 7770)

With the internet, it is easier for people to watch each other, harder to hide things. And television has been important, too.

So conditions for a more decent world are coming into place.

There's a situation that I'd call a "God send" if I were a church-goer -- certainly an opportunity.

First, the Bush administration is alienating large fractions of the rest of the world - and clearly discrediting many of the ideas it stands for, including unilateral military domination (sometimes with a smiling face.)

Secondly, the military-industrial-complex in the United States has gotten itself into, and committed to, some huge, longstanding patterns of fraud, that are so basic and widespread that they are not impossible to check. Once these patterns are checked (and missile defense is a prime example, but not the only one) some patterns that have been degrading the United States, and making it poorer, and degrading the whole world, and impoverishing it, are going to be discredited. Or, with couraged, can be discredited.

Honorable people, including honorable military people, should be for the truth here, and reasonably proportionate arrangements, rather than arrangements based on dangerous lies and fraud.

If nation states outside the United States wanted checking of these matters to happen, it would happen.

Once the facts were clearly enough established, so that the truth ceased to be "somehow, too weak" the United States could and would sort itself out.

rshowalt - 10:37am Jul 30, 2001 EST (#7608 of 7770)

The world needs military balances. With human beings as dangerous as they are, soldiers have necessary work to do. But the American military has grown, and continues, out of proportion, and exists on bases of doctrine and lies that produce responses out of proportion to any reasonable interest of the United States, or the rest of the world.

For that reason, among others, showing the fraud of the Missile Defense program is important.

It is part of a larger picture. There are plenty of things wrong, all over the world, and Americans have a right to criticise them. But there are some major, and essential flaws with American military doctrine and actions, and it is important that these be fixed.

An enormous amount of the work of the "military industrial complex" has been intellectually and technically corrupt, and ineffectual. We are dealing with frauds here, and some people who have been given high status actually deserve to be shunned.

That notion should become more widespread in the world based on evidence that can be checked, and contested, in detail, in public, with enough breadth to the examination that closure can reasonably occur. Jury trials have served this purpose for years. With the internet, and some conventions, it is going to be possible to do a similarly thorough job on some very big, very dangerous frauds.

betsy01b - 11:53am Jul 30, 2001 EST (#7609 of 7770)

The President’s plan is most feasible and realistic. One should take notice that only left-wingers argue against it.

I'm very happy that we finally have a President that puts our interests ahead of China, Cuba, Iraq, Iran and other totalitarian governments.

jimmyz211a - 12:38pm Jul 30, 2001 EST (#7610 of 7770)

The missile defense shield will be costing us lots of money and even more time than first thought. But what exactly is the price tag on an American city and millions of people?

James Ziolkowski Buffalo NY shellback211@aol.com ten year Navy veteran

gisterme - 03:59pm Jul 30, 2001 EST (#7611 of 7770)

jimmyz211a 7/30/01 12:38pm

"The missile defense shield will be costing us lots of money and even more time than first thought. But what exactly is the price tag on an American city and millions of people?..."

Great point jimmyz! That's really the bottom line. It turns out that $100,000.00 over 10 years amounts to about $5 per month per American. That's less than a pack of cigarettes or about the same as a six-pack. I'll gladly support spending that much to save a single city anywhere. That's not extravagance or fraud. That's a small sacrefice that many would call compassion. Why some folks would be so ingenerous as to risk a city anywhere just to promote their political agenda is beyond me. Just for five bucks a month.

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