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 - 12:41pm Sep 7, 2001 EST (#8596 of 8604)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

When you get an evasive but extensive answer, such as the one I got from gisterme , a Washington operator, written between 2:30 and 3:00 AM, which avoids an issue (beyond saying -- :"you're biased") and then makes an elaborate effort at distraction -- that bears some thinking about. And, thinking about it, I AM giving some thought to my own point of view.

Gisterme says I was baised when I asked the following question:

""...When Turner gave his money, did he know how close Sam Nunn is to Kissinger and Wesley Clark and other people who do not communicate well with Russians, and who have an interest in glorifying, justifying, sanitizing, perpetuating, and profiting from the Cold War, and the arrangements built in America to fight the Cold War?..."

I wonder about that.

I notice that gisterme , after dismissing me with a few words as "biased", then proceeds to glorify, justify, sanitize, and argue for the profitability of the Cold War. gisterme 9/7/01 2:38am

rshowalter - 12:43pm Sep 7, 2001 EST (#8597 of 8604)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Here are postings that I assume gisterme read, that he did NOT respond to that made serious points.

MD8564 rshowalter 9/6/01 5:40pm ... MD8565 rshowalter 9/6/01 7:24pm
MD8566 rshowalter 9/6/01 8:18pm . . . MD8567 rshowalter 9/6/01 8:20pm
MD8568 rshowalter 9/6/01 8:37pm . . .

Some of these points are important enough that I'm interested that gisterme did not contest them.

rshowalter - 12:44pm Sep 7, 2001 EST (#8598 of 8604)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Certainly, I agree with gisterme that the world would be very different had very different decisions been made, and very different things happened, 55 years ago. Neither he nor I can possibly know what might have happened.

The key question is, what now? MD2550 rshowalter 4/24/01 12:22pm

rshowalter - 12:50pm Sep 7, 2001 EST (#8599 of 8604)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

No one has to dispute that the past happened, and constrained the future. Nor can.

No one has to dispute that some very good things (as well as some very bad things) have happened in the last fifty years. Nor can.

(Along with many bad things, some good things would have happened in the last fifty years if Hitler had won.

There would have been technical progress in that case, too. In fact, Nazi Germany had some significant technical achievements.

One doesn't have to deny these technical achievements, to regret other things about that same nation at that same time.)

rshowalter - 12:54pm Sep 7, 2001 EST (#8600 of 8604)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

MD2552 rshowalter 4/24/01 12:42pm ... MD2553 rshowalter 4/24/01 12:43pm

The not yet done is undetermined, or at the discretion of actors. . . . The present is. . . . . The past, which is the sequence of present moments that are now past, must logically be fixed in the same way.

And yet, for real people, what we can know of the past is a construction.

What do we owe to the notion of "truth" in the past -- and why does it matter -- and how do we determine what to believe?

These are essential issues if notions of "right" and "wrong" that depend on facts are ever to be determinate.

Can we, as Richard Garwin would wish "wave a wand --- and make the nuclear age go away?" Clearly not.

But we can find answers that make the risks of the nuclear age far, far less than they have been, and far far less than they are now.

That depends on finding good answers, of disciplined beauty, in terms of facts that are real.

Those answers will have to rest on sound information, shared by the key people involved. --

To get that information, and know that it is sound, we have to "nail down" key issues about the facts of the past.

rshowalter - 01:04pm Sep 7, 2001 EST (#8601 of 8604)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

One thing I feel clear about, for quite practical as well as aesthetic and moral reasons, is that it would be a good thing for the United States to act so that it seemed, in the eyes of much of the world, to bear less resemblence to a Nazi state. With a military officer corps with less resemblance to Major Strasser of Casablanca than now occurs to many people.

Including almarst , and including me.

(3 following messages)

New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense