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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?

gisterme - 03:18pm Sep 14, 2001 EST (#9058 of 9067)

Although I have personally seen no such reports, it's troubling to hear that some misguided Americans may be vandalizing mosques or otherwise persecuting American Muslims.

If the rumors are true, I appeal to all angry Americans to stop such behavior. We must not let our righteous anger over the events of last Tuesday drive us to acts that are counter- productive to the task at hand.

True Muslims already understand, far better than we of other faiths do, that these radical terrorists do not in any way represent Islam. We non-Muslims must understand that too. We must also realize that our fellow Americans who happen to be Muslims will become one of our nation's greatest assets in the process of defeating the kind of evil that today saddens all of our hearts.

The mass-murderers who carry out atrocities like the one we witnessed last Tuesday proclaim that they do these things in the name of Islam. They are liars. They do these things to spill innocent blood, attempting to rally the ignorant to believe their lies, with the intent to motivate the spilling of yet more blood (not their own, of course). Fellow Americans, don't allow the hate-dripping lies of these animals to cause us to damage our own ability to send them to the place where they belong.

The delivery of truth to the uneducated masses of Islam will be a far more powerful weapon against these terrorist dogs than any guns or bombs.

The guilty need to feel the sword.

The innocent need radios.

rshowalter - 03:33pm Sep 14, 2001 EST (#9059 of 9067)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

YES.

And they need to feel that the people speaking to them can hear, also.

rshowalter - 04:04pm Sep 14, 2001 EST (#9060 of 9067)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Truth, to work crossculturally, has to be checkable in objective and multiply independent ways.

People need that. Real people live, and have to live, along a continuum of trust and distrust.

For action, things have to be checked , so that they can be trusted enough for confidence.

When the issues are important enough (and military matters, where war and peace are involve are) then checking has to happen.

Checking on the things that matter needs to be morally forcing.

Especially among allies. Or people being asked to be allies.

Otherwise, when complex co-operations are needed, there is no solution.

Because deception, and restriction of information, have classified solutions out of existence.

American institutional and intellectual traditions, shaped by the Cold War, may be standing in the way of safety now:

MD8698 rshowalter 9/9/01 1:10pm ... MD8699 rshowalter 9/9/01 1:11pm

Perhaps, ugly though things are, we can find some practical ways of making them better.

rshowalter - 04:16pm Sep 14, 2001 EST (#9061 of 9067)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

We need to go from "no solution" to situations where there are good solutions to be found.

We need a reframing:

MD8298 rshowalter 9/1/01 2:14pm ... MD8299 rshowalter 9/1/01 2:15pm
MD8300 rshowalter 9/1/01 3:52pm ... MD8301 rshowalter 9/1/01 3:54pm
MD8302 rshowalter 9/1/01 3:55pm ...

If we're to go after terrorism, in all its forms (something almarst wants, too) we have to do it in ways that can work.

We owe it to ourselves to approach things that way, and our allies and potential allies should insist on it.

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