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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?

almarst-2001 - 05:47pm Sep 29, 2001 EST (#9916 of 9925)

The point being maid that indeed, if Iraq or Serbia would posess a significant WMD capability, the US would probably not go and bomb those countries to the stone age as easiliy if at all.

Instead, some other solutions would have to be seeked and found. Why is it so bad?

The Kuwait "Oil kindom" was "saved... What an achievement for the "enlightened" West, ready to sell any and all its "ideals" and kill and deswtroy indiscriminatly for the pint of a cheap oil. So the "brave" Americans can continue to enjoy the high altitude "humanitarian" bombing and keep driving their beloved SUVs? Soaked in blood, as a matter of fact.

However, the false sence of security the NMD will provide is just that - false. And the recent terror in NYC has shown it to all having eyes open and brains functioning - sadly, the small minority of US population if to believe the media polls.

How many more disasters are needed to teach the lesson?

rshowalter - 05:56pm Sep 29, 2001 EST (#9917 of 9925)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

rshowalter 9/29/01 5:39pm

Would those capabilities, and all other reasonable military capabilities, have to cost more than we're spending? Or as much?

I'm not sure I see why. If the money now being spent and proposed for practically useless weapons systems were diverted to much more information rich approaches to inflicting damage on "enemies" -- much could be accomplished!

If one looks at what Bin Laden's followers have accomplished - - look at what nation states might accomplish in they adopted more diverse, information rich, flexible approaches to "military persuasion."

There might be some difficulties in making a clear, publicly explainable distinction between military action and terrorism - - but the effort to make that distinction clear to all concerned might be well worth it.

I think that, with honest bookeeping, it would be clear that it would be very much in the interest of all concerned to prohibit nukes and other weapons of mass destruction, and find ways to make those prohibitions effective - or at least effective enough so that WMD risks to life and limb, for the world and for individual nation states, were MUCH smaller than those today.

rshowalter - 05:57pm Sep 29, 2001 EST (#9918 of 9925)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

almarst-2001 9/29/01 5:47pm . . to teach the lesson, the case has to be better made than it has been - - but people, in the US and elsewhere, are questioning many more things, and much more ready to hear it.

rshowalter - 06:00pm Sep 29, 2001 EST (#9919 of 9925)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

almarst-2001 9/29/01 5:47pm . . . neither is nuclear deterrance the only possible deterrance, or anywhere near the best one.

Deterrance is probably indispensible between nation states, but we ought to find better ways than nukes - - - which are unusable under virtually all circumstances anyway.

almarst-2001 - 06:00pm Sep 29, 2001 EST (#9920 of 9925)

I already posted enough arguments on a "virtues" and "superiority" of a Western "civilization".

To all defenders, I would just like to remind that there are still living survivors as well as executioners of Aushwitz and Buhenwald. As well as witnesses of linches and segregation in US. As well as survivors and vitnesses of Hamburg, Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the reminders and casualties of a carpet bombing , napalm and Agent Orange in Korea and Vietnam, the survivors and executioners of South American dictators and so on and on. A little humbleness and historical perspective is clearly would be helpfull. Or at least just a plain human sence of SHAME.

rshowalter - 06:06pm Sep 29, 2001 EST (#9921 of 9925)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

I agree - - but making the case is harder than it seems at first, in America, in part because what Americans "know" is so compartmentalized.

Almarst, perhaps you've heard this sermon before - it was given by James Slatton, a big-league sermon pitcher in a good church, who knows the crowd he preaces to. And Slatton could assume, in some ways, that his audience knew all about what their risks were.

But at the level of moral action - - they were stumped -- thought there was nothing to be done. Perhaps some would like to listen to it again - it has somewhat more resonance, to me, since September 11th.

We need to get people, in America, aware in the ways needed to rethink some things. If that were possible -- if we could break through there - - a great deal would be possible - and the world would be both a safer and a more decent place.

http://www.wisc.edu/rshowalt/sermon.html

rshowalter - 06:08pm Sep 29, 2001 EST (#9922 of 9925)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

People in America have been brainwashed - and it has been no accident - - to be afraid to think about questioning our nuclear policies. We need to reverse that. The psychological resistance is real, and serious. But not, in my view, insurmountable.

It seems to me to be worth surmounting.

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