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Missile Defense

Technology has always found its greatest consumer in a nation's war and defense efforts. Since the last attempts at a "Star Wars" defense system, has technology changed considerably enough to make the latest Missile Defense initiatives more successful? Can such an application of science be successful? Is a militarized space inevitable, necessary or impossible?

Read Debates, a new Web-only feature culled from Readers' Opinions, published every Thursday.

rshow55 - 08:51am Jul 1, 2002 EST (#2812 of 2812)

Lchic's postings are often distinguished, and often graceful, perceptive and deep in ways I admire, but can't match. That's been true consistently, I think, in past weeks. I think her postings since MD2796 rshow55 6/30/02 8:04pm . . . have been especially profound and important.

Questions for a 4th of July discussion:

Why and how are Americans afraid? Of what? How easily can they be silenced, intimidated? How are they couragous - but also how are they uncourageous? In detail, both qualitatively and quantitatively.

What has the Cold War done, and what is it still doing, to our democracy? How are "compromises" of America's broader principles, necessary during the Cold War, but necessary no longer, compromising our life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness? And endagering and degrading the lives, liberties, and comforts of ourselves and others, as well?

MD2286 rshow55 5/18/02 5:44pm ... MD2345 rshow55 5/22/02 7:54am
MD2462-3 rshow55 6/4/02 6:54am ... MD2541-44 rshow55 6/15/02 8:37am
MD2661 lchic 6/22/02 12:13am ... MD2666 rshow55 6/22/02 8:45am
MD2666 rshow55 6/22/02 8:45am ... MD2666 rshow55 6/22/02 8:45am
MD2666 rshow55 6/22/02 8:45am ... MD2686 rshow55 6/22/02 8:39pm
MD2687 rshow55 6/22/02 9:04pm ...

The things Eisenhower warned of in his FAREWELL ADDRESS of January 17, 1961 http://www.geocities.com/~newgeneration/ikefw.htm have happened. The subversive, cancerous patterns developed, after much borrowing from Germany, to fight the Cold War have evolved, and now diffused all through government, politics, and business. At the same time, our nuclear controls have been left, almost untouched in decisive ways, for thirty years, and we are in a new world. There are things that need to be checked about those controls, lest the world perish. And all over our society, there are problems that American need to understand, and fix, with the world watching, and checking. When we do, we'll be much better off, the world will be a more beautiful place, and we'll almost all of us feel better about ourselves, our country, and the world.

You can "call me Ishmael" or not, as you choose. If I'm Ishmael, I've been at it, consistently, for a long time. Within my limitations, I'm doing the best I can, and I'm trying to be a patriot, too.

I'm trying to debrief, in ways consistent with my promises to Casey, and recent promises I've made to CIA as well. There are things that the Bush administration wants to accomplish, that are going wrong, that would have a better chance of going right if they knew some things I'd like to be able to communicate to them. For reasons that are physiologically unchangeable, some of that communication has to happen face to face - not so I can "blow something past them" -- but so that ideas can be understood so that they can use them.

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