Hi John Soileau; Re: "... we get megabucks on a "missile defense system" that, to the dismay of scientists, is rushed along without demonstration that it works."
Having been involved in more than my share of weapons systems, I can assure you that these are complicated systems that require a lot of testing before they can be made to work. NONE OF THEM EVER PASS THEIR TESTS YEARS BEFORE THEY ARE DEPLOYED. This is not some new episode in our history, the inability to produce usable weapons systems without years and years of prior effort dates at least to the fascinating manufacturing history of WW1 where the US failed to produce a single useful combat aircraft design, and was only able to successfully manufacture a single combat aircraft usable in the war (DeHaviland DH-4 bomber / recon with the Liberty engine, designed by the British):
internetmodeler.com
internetmodeler.com
centennialofflight.gov
By the way, after the war, it was quite a scandal that with all the money the US spent (on the likes of Boeing, Curtiss, Martin and Wright), it never got a single US aircraft design that met the needs of WW1. Congress investigated, but concluded that it just takes time to start a new design. If the Europeans hadn't already proved that it was possible to design useful combat aircraft, our WW1 experience would have indicated that it was impossible, LOL.
As to whether a missile defense system can be made to work, I have no doubt that it can. Of course, like any system, it can be beaten, but the same can be said of any other military system. This should be something that we, as a nation, must come to grips with. I am sick of the SUV driving cowards who want to somehow achieve perfect safety on a planet which is 100% fatal to human life. Every other nation on the planet knows that it can be beaten in war because their weapons systems are not perfect. It shouldn't come as a surprise to us that our weapons systems can also be beaten. There are no perfect military systems.
Most people that berate stuff like the missile defense system typically have similar attitudes towards every other defense system. I've seen illogical arguments by (no doubt left wing) computer science professors to the effect that missile defense can't work because it's too complicated. Sure, if the contract were let out to UC Berkelely, yeah, I'd agree that the software wouldn't work, LOL.
Re: "Meanwhile, around 95% of cargo shipments into the country go unchecked ..."
What's your point here? You might as well have gone on about highway fatalities or the number of Americans who own firearms, LOL. Missile defense and terrorism defense are two completely different problems. Missile defense is used to defend against missile attacks from sovereign nations. Terrorism defense is police (CIA/FBI/etc.) work used to defend against terror attacks from criminal organizations with no direct backing by sovereign nations. In the event that a sovereign nations does directly back a terrorist, then that is an act of war and can be treated as such militarily, an arena in which the US is a superpower. Sovereign governments can be deterred, terrorists cannot.
Part of the problem that led us into Iraq was fuzzy thinking well illustrated by your comparing the two problems of police work and military work as if they had anything to do with each other. Bush still acts as if the military campaign in Iraq is somehow part of the "war" on terrorism. The truth is that our occupation of Iraq is setting back the police action against terrorism.
Let me try and explain the difference between terrorism and war.
Sovereign governments use missiles rather than terror attacks because missiles allow the government to control the process, and to negotiate the continued existence of their own government, which is the fundamental objective of all governments.
Terrorists use terror because they do not have access to the enormous amounts of money, space, and time that are available to even shi++y li++le countries like Iraq. Terrorists cannot afford ICBMs, governments can. Nor are terrorists big on negotiation. Al Qaeda doesn't even take credit for their stuff.
Another way of putting it: Military forces are not usually built (in peacetime) with the intention that they be used in a final free for all that wipes out both sides. They're built as a threat, to deter the other guy. A missile is a deterrence, because once you have it, you can threaten to launch it. A bomb snuck onto a cargo ship cannot be threatened, because if you threaten to do it you will give the other side a relatively inexpensive way to counter the threat (search cargo vessels). To be useful to a government, a threat has to be able to be put into action as a result of negotiations which take into account the fact that the specific threat exists.
A government using terror as a threat would be like trying to get your way with a gunslinger by telling him that you are going to shoot him, but you're going to wait until after he drinks too much and falls asleep at the bar. In a lawless town (i.e. the international situation of no global police force), the result of issuing this threat will be to tempt him to shoot you first, or at least not drink as much as usual, LOL.
If it were possible to take actions against terrorists that are equivalent to what is done to enemy populations in (real) war, then terrorism would be defeated. But terrorists do not have return addresses. We can't drop bombs on their houses and kill them (along with their families and neighbors) because we don't know where those houses are. Nor is the killing of massive numbers of innocent people allowed in police work. This is why our occupation of Iraq is failing so miserably, we're trying to use a military force as an anti-terror weapon.
Missile defense is useless against terrorists, it's only a military system, not a police system. It's also fairly useless against big countries like the USSR, Germany, France, Japan or China who have enough smarts to build fancy spoofing systems. Missile defense is only useful against little countries like North Korea which are just barely able to put together a missile that reaches the US, and don't have the ability (yet) to also put together the spoofing to get past a simple missile defense.
There are a lot of people, myself included, who believe that Bush's moronic foreign policy will result in nuclear proliferation. The objective of missile defense is to insure against having to have a policy of MAD against little countries like Iran or North Korea. It's one thing to have a MAD arrangement with a few old men in the Soviet Union. It's quite another thing to have 10 or 20 simultaneous MAD arrangements with God only knows what kinds of governments will appear in the next 30 years. Eventually, you're going to find a guy who simply is not deterred, and who pulls the trigger. Look at what Bush did, doesn't that make you feel a little more worried about North Korea? Or is it really just an indication that you can win an office in a Democracy with considerably fewer brains than in a dictatorship?
From a peacenik point of view, missile defense should be attractive because unlike almost every other military system, it does not kill people, only machines. It's sort of the opposite of the neutron bomb, LOL. And from a foreign policy point of view, missile defense is an alternative to preemptive wars against countries attempting to achieve nuclear proliferation.
-- Carl
P.S. Hey, I know! Let's fire all those scientists and engineers who are working on missile defense! We want the US to run the world, but it's clear that our real problem is third world civilians, not ICBMs. So instead, we should concentrate our scarce scientific resources on making better contraptions for allowing us to go into countries like Iraq and to disarm the locals! That way we can afford to conquer and occupy ALL the oil states! |
