Couple of things
- In a world in which our primary enemies are shadowy organizations focused on close, personal 'combat' (i.e. suicide bombings), Jeff Emmanuel calls for ... a missile defense system. In it, he asks why North Korea would object to us building a missile defense system unless they wished us ill. The lack of knowledge of recent history is staggering in that statement, but no matter. North Korea objects because it throws off the existing balance they have just achieved in (supposedly) acquiring nuclear weapons. Mutal Assured Destruction kept this world together during the Cold War, and the North Koreans - as completely insane as that government is - want to buy into that. Kim Jong-Il may be a loon, but he craves power ... and lobbing his one nuclear missile at the U.S. or any other Western country would result in the destruction of his country and the end of him.
- Furthermore, it's not that I'm necessarily opposed to a missile defense system, but that it doesn't appear to be the most effective way - practically and financially - to defend our country from weapons which may or may not exist.
- Athens-Clarke County mayoral candidate Charlie Maddox strikes back.
- Hillary rounds up the proposed changes to the Georgia license tag, complete with Atlanta Journal-Constitution reader submissions. Note tag with phrase 'Dumber Than A Bag Of Hammers' ...
- I mean, I consider myself a progressive but some of Pete's examples are technically kinda conservative ... as well as being too incredibly specific to be able to effectively pigeonhole into a particular political ideology.
- Furthermore, it's not that I'm necessarily opposed to a missile defense system, but that it doesn't appear to be the most effective way - practically and financially - to defend our country from weapons which may or may not exist.
- Athens-Clarke County mayoral candidate Charlie Maddox strikes back.
- Hillary rounds up the proposed changes to the Georgia license tag, complete with Atlanta Journal-Constitution reader submissions. Note tag with phrase 'Dumber Than A Bag Of Hammers' ...
- I mean, I consider myself a progressive but some of Pete's examples are technically kinda conservative ... as well as being too incredibly specific to be able to effectively pigeonhole into a particular political ideology.
posted by Jmac at 7:14 AM
14 Comments:
If ol' Kim Jong is a "loon," as you say, then how can we be so sure what his motivations are or that he will act rationally in his own long-term self-interest? Mutually Assured Destruction only works if both parties are a. not insane/irrational, and b. not desiring of their own destruction. (Perhaps (b) is just a subtype of (a)...)
What's more, Il might be perfectly rational, but simply operating with bad information. For instance, perhaps he honestly believes that we do not have the will to strike back. There are certainly ethicists in this country who believe in unilateral disarmament, and that it is always wrong to use indiscriminate weapons, even if the other side uses them first. Maybe Kimmy-boy has read the doctoral dissertation of the chair of our philosophy department here at UGA, which was on this very topic, and has decided that Americans don't really believe in using nuclear weapons any more. This would, no doubt, be a grave miscalculation on his part, but that fact would not prevent him from launching his missile at us.
You liberals and your refusal to forget the Cold War, sheesh. Just kidding...
If it seems like there is any promise to relibale missile defense technology actually being doable, then assuming we are going to remain a country that spends gazillions of dollars on defense anyway, why not pursue it?
I think if you take a look at Kim Jong-Il, you'll get a pretty clear picture of a guy who is overwhelmingly obsessed with his own self-preservation. I take this to mean that even though he is crazy, he is logical enough to understand that any sort of military strike - be it conventional or nuclear - against South Korea, the U.S. or the West would seriously undermine his ability to keep his power.
The reason he sought nuclear weapons, based on the research and existing data, is that he wanted to achieve some sort of balance with the U.S., Japan and South Korea who do have that ace in the hole (particularly in light of increased U.S. military action in the Middle East and that whole 'Axis of Evil' thing). Therefore, North Korea's breaking of the nuclear treaty of the 1990s is based on a defensive manuever designed to deter any possible U.S. invasion (which, admittedly, was not in the cards).
The move to create a missile defense system one-ups North Korea, and Kim Jong-Il wants to preserve this new-fangled balance he's achieved.
As to the actual system ... again, I'm not saying I'm necessarily opposed to a missile defense system, but I don't think it's entirely vital to our security right now. Understandably, pursuing new technologies designed to keep your citizenry safe are always good, but we have to evaluate whether or not this defensive system might actually put us more in jeopardy than protect us.
I HATE HATE HATE license plates with Web sites on them. Georgia.gov directs you to a site where the top stories are ... online tag renewal and fishing licenses. At least direct license tag readers (???) to a tourism site or something. Geez.
assuming we are going to remain a country that spends gazillions of dollars on defense anyway
Do we have to?
Dude, there are plenty of countries out there that don't spend ridiculous amounts of money on defense and still don't get attacked. Like, say, Finland. I'm pulling that example out of thin air, but I'm willing to bet that Finland probably doesn't spend all that much on defense. And they're doing just fine. They even have freedom and stuff (plus a ton of cell phones).
But hey, we're probably not going to agree on much in this department.
I guess the thing I really wanted to bring up is that there doesn't seem to be any evidence so far that a missile defense system could ever ever work. And we do have soldiers who could use some stuff right now.
Well, again, I'm not going on record as saying that I oppose or favor a missile defense system. But I do, as usual, wonder why you think those on the left are just so absolutely flippant about defending America when nothing in the history of this nation - or even the past five years - would suggest otherwise.
What always happens is that you disagree with me over a particular manner of defense (say the War in Iraq) and then say the entire Democratic Party and other liberal types are 'weak on defense.' This couldn't be farther from the truth. Disagreement doesn't mean that one is stronger or better than the other ... it means there is disagreement.
If I say the best way to defend America is to bolster homeland security measures and increase the number of U.S. forces tracking al-Qaida in places like Africa or Afghanistan, while you say we must continue to fight the fight in Iraq ... how is one of use 'weak' on defense? We both have the same end, but different means. We can disagree over those means and come to the conclusion that one might be more appropriate than the other, but it doesn't mean one of us cares less about defense.
Plus, where in the world did I say that I sought a balance? Or that I want a tie? I said that Kim Jong-Il sought a balance with America by pursuing nuclear weapons (as does Iran), but my retelling of his perception does not mean it's the reality.
The U.S. is unparalled in its military might in the world. We've got, what ... like 12 of the 17 aircraft carriers in the world? Do I want to give that balance up? Of course not. But, again, does me (or others on the left) questioning the validity of missile defense equal mean we don't want to keep our military forces the best in the world?
Finland did a pretty good job of defending themselves during WW2.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_Finland_during_World_War_II
I'm all for missile defense systems. When the enemy tells us when they are launching something and what their target is and they launch one warhead instead of multiple warheads, many of which can be fake, and we happen to have a missile defense system in relative proximity of the target then we stand a 50% chance of not being obliterated.
Also, missile defense systems are very good at stopping terrorist attacks.
But, again, does me (or others on the left) questioning the validity of missile defense equal mean we don't want to keep our military forces the best in the world?
Except when it does. I'm indifferent to that need. But, you know, I'm a liberal internationalist pacifist, so feel free to ignore me.
Hippie. ;)
dawg, you said, "What you perhaps fail to appreciate is that defense is what allows you to have a competing list of priorities."
I think on the one hand, this is a fair point: stable borders and stable interior usually does permit the advances of mathematics, philosophy, and aesthetics. Powerful civilizations, from certain of the Chinese empires to the Roman to the Islamic to the English to the American empires, permit an exchange of wealth and luxury into segments of the population with the most time to devote towards cultural, social, and political development. I don't think it is a secret or a repressed truth at all that opulence and aristocracy have done much to preserve reason and tradition and culture at the sacrifice of oppressed and ruined cultures and peoples. But this is the other hand: people on the left tend to think that history is no longer to be regarded as deterministic or repetitive. They believe that preserving a cultural virtue through destructive of others is not a larger virtue worth pursuing. To that end, the goal is to find a new way of living which does not need a foundational violence to support itself.
As for me, I agree that the ability to wield the sword is essential to preserve. But I also agree that wielding the sword does not produce preservation. That is, the tools of war are no longer being used for solely acts of self-defense, but for active aggression in an attempt to annihilate all traces of perceived evil in the world. The ultimate safeharbor by removing all storms through removing all weather.
To say that we may, one day, have a viable, technologically feasible, and economically sustainable missile defense program is a good claim. Perhaps if we invested such efforts into, say, producing smaller and more compact means of harnessing renewable energy sources or into biologically sustainable ways of reusing farmland without having to rely upon fertilizer oil, our need to protect and preserve a self-depleting way of life will not require such tools of overwhelming, indiscriminate destruction.
So, I am going to also address Xon's point. The US should not pursue missile defense because such a program does nothing to actually prevent a military buildup towards larger and more deadly conventional weapons. The US demonstrated its willingness to use fuel air explosives and carpet bombing against the mountains of Afghanistan, with the usual indiscriminate nature of such weapons killing non-combatants even long after the initial bombing phase (as when unexploded cluster bombs are picked up accidentally by children or by adults who mistake them for food packets). In a world where there is an absolute prohibition against the use of nuclear weapons, there is an increase in the optional use of devasting, non-nuclear weapons. This in a way similar to how a married man, fully knowing that he will never engage in penetration so that he can successfully lie to his wife by saying, "I didn't have sex with her," will still indulge in all sorts of other pleasures with his mistresses. That is, forging the disconnect between the nuclear weapon and the non-nuclear does not, itself, prohibit about the proliferation and use of the non-nuclear weapons, but rather makes it so that we can use them as much as we want up to the point of no return. A flirtatious war is what we will want and get.
A missile defense program makes it so that nuclear weapons are further disconnected from all other aspects of warfare, when the goal of any commitment to peace is to rationalize warfare as a coherent, consistent picture. The nuclear weapon is a political statement that one wishes for all traces of the enemy to be annihilated: it is the logical framework (premise, operation, and consequent) for true, total war. So, it is no surprise that the nations who come to possess the nuclear weapon also come to believe more strongly in total war, where civilian, non-combatant life can either be targetted in incidental ways (the enemy fired from among them) or directly targetted in explicit ways (they support the enemy materially and socially).
My thought is that one should see nuclear weapons as strongly connected to how one thinks about the non-nuclear weapons in the arsenal of the nation. That is, to have the option to destroy completely—what was once the province of God himself, but we have done away with the gods—is to think the option of complete annihilation of another human being. It is to think that there are human beings not worth preserving, even if they are political rivals. Especially if that rival wishes my total destruction, the very fact that this is a moral wrong shows all the more why it must be resisted in us and why it must be removed as an option we materially consider.
So, that's why I am against the creation of a program for missile defense. The economic and technological considerations are important, but they pale in comparison to the moral result in us if we come to further accept that nuclear warfare is an option for us. It is not that any life is worth living, but one of virtue.
I think that you, Xon, as a just war supporter, should believe that at the very least.
Oh, and, his family name is Kim, not Il. Jong-il, as one, is his "first" name. Just like I don't call you Host Xo.
Yeah, I saw after I posted my comment that I had mixed up which two names were connected by the hyphen. I was smart in that I knew that the "first" name listed was actually the surname, but I was dumb in that I didn't properly identify which was the first and which the last.
As to your reply, Charles, I just am not persuaded that the desire to prevent nuclear weapons from being a viable option for those who wish to attack us entails that we are becoming more likely to use them ourselves against any or all enemies. If you could do something more to convince me of these moral implications you are rightly concerned about, then perhaps I could be swayed.
As for the possibility you mention that taking nukes off the table makes us more likely to be non-chalant about using other indiscriminate weapons of mass destruction, I just think you've mixed up cause and effect. We (Americans, western civilization as a whole to some extent) are more likely to favor "total" war, and to blow the be-hey-seuss out of people, combatant or not. This change has come about for a variety of reasons, in my and others' estimation, the details of which I don't desire to get into. But, given that we are now a more fervently war-like people, we unsurprisingly see enemy nations in a "totally evil" kind of light, make little to no distinction between combatants and non-combatants within those nations, and look for any excuse to "send them back to the stone age." Thus, we naturally pursue weapons to help us scratch that itch. But you seem to have it that having the weapons gave us the itch, which is backwards. It seems to me that if we hadn't already had the itch, we wouldn't have built the weapons.
(This is more than a little simplistic, of course, given that nukes in any case were developed during WWII as part of an arms race between ourselves, the Germans, and the Japanese. First one across the finish line gets to prevent half a million civilian deaths in their own country by inflicting the same on the other. We "won," which is unfortunate, but was at least, in some sense, motivated by genuine self-defense and not war-mongering aggression. But I don't know the particular history that led us to develop cluster bombs and daisy-cutters and the like, so...)
In one sense, Xon, it is simple: by eliminating the capability of other nations to use nuclear weapons in an effective strike, the United States ensures that its technological superiority renders it the lone nation to have nuclear weapons for making effective strikes. It entirely defeats MAD—the reason why various nations around the world have tried to enforce treaties to stop it as well as space-based weapons and defenses. So, the sort of argument that Emanuel advances about terrorists being the ones who first gave up on the rationality of MAD is defeated by the very fact that we have been pursuing this abrogation of that policy for some time
ourselves. And, to be the one nation with effective nuclear weapons itself defeats the claim that we possess them solely for self-defense purposes: bringing a tank to a battle of sabers is to explain to one's enemies the futility of any and all disagreement. It is not an act of a diplomatic nation seeking reconciliation. dawg corleone, in this sense, is entirely consistent. We should not only have superior firepower, but qualitatively superior. Safety and security, because nobody else is going to do it for us. So then, we must demonstrate our resolve to not only kill, but to kill supremely well, to those who would dare to think our lives unlivable.
But, as I had said and which I will repeat, the emergence of the nuclear weapon is unlike any kind of increase in destruction. Our fusion bombs do not simply kill people or demolish buildings. They are like the angels who cast mountains into the sea, and who then make those islands no more. I've looked at the images after Ivy Mike and Castle Bravo, I've read the data on it, I suggest you do, too. I think it is intellectual suicide to consider these weapons as deadlier versions of grenades, or even tools for diplomatic pressure. As I said, they not only increase levels of hostility, but they dramatically alter the terms and landscape in which hostility occurs.
My earlier concern was perhaps not explicit, though I thought it was. I am not arguing that having nuclear weapons means we are more likely to use them (neverminding that the first nation who did have successful weaponized versions was the first nation who used them in war), my point is that having nuclear weapons means one is more likely to engage in conflicts and wars without moral temper and without distinction for the difference between my enemy who has a weapon and my enemy who has a thought. Again, me: "In a world where there is an absolute prohibition against the use of nuclear weapons, there is an increase in the optional use of devasting, non-nuclear weapons." And, given my premise that the nature of warfare is made irrational by the emergence of nuclear weapons, then one should see that the United States, in having a means of preventing other nations from using nuclear weapons effectively, is all the more made irrational because it alone can use them effectively. Here, what I am saying is irrational is the logic of the affair: everything up to the declared forbidden is to be enjoyed, guiltlessly! I confess that I am here very much influenced by Žižek's analysis, and so I know for you that is just more reason to disagree (leftist and psychoanalytic!?), but the claim is very persuasive to me. History demonstrates its persuasiveness.
As for your correction about the itch to kill regardless of role, thank you. Certainly one can say there are many reasons for why the West now wants to endorse total war, and I can say that, too. My earlier point concerned the logic of the nuclear weapon, and you know as well as I do that logic is about formality. If it seems I ascribe causality in a mistaken way, it's because I am too lax in my already extended language. Here, let me be clear: the choice that chooses the nuclear weapon is the same choice that chooses the total war. This is not incompatible with what I said earlier.
Nevertheless, if you agree with me that we, not just the West generally but let us talk about us, choose total war, then do the fuck something about it, Xon. You may correct me my mistaken causality, but don't let that stop you from correcting this increasing militarization of American life, where the banner of our protection is the ashen shadows of our victims, where our philosophy keeps us in high spirits as our bombs keep others in caves. You know, you fucking know what evil total war is, and you know all too well what it means for us morally. It is a spiritual evil, and I cannot even think that anyone would consider themselves Christian at home while at the same time endorsing satan's nihilism on the front lines.
We cannot give up on our vigilance to hold life as not only sacred, but full of dignity no matter the sinfulness we do. If such vigilance needs death, then we shall dispense death with full recognition of the dignity we threaten and do so in accordance with what it means to treat others with respect before the law, and we shall cry in ashes and repent and pray for God's mercy afterwards. But all this gleeful romping over the skulls of our enemies, extralegal and extramoral, where practical results and realistic expectations calculate with efficient speed the best way to eliminate, if you think we are accepting this now, then what are you waiting on a missile defense shield to bring you later?
I beleive the Soviet Union had a little to do with Hitler's defeat as well...but don't let that 'history' thing get in the way.
As far as anti-ballistic missile (ABM) defense: first of all, we're a lot further along in regards to ballistic missile defense than we've ever let on. Two words: Patriot & Aegis.
Second of all, the only nations a missile defense system would defend us from, in the mid-term future, is Russia, China, Britain and France.
Kim Jong-Il has no 'balance' with us, we outweigh him about 1000 to 1. He cannot negotiate on anything close to equal footing with the United States. But he can make it very difficult for the United States to invade his country. That's the rational purpose of nations like North Korea and Iran developing nuclear weapons. To defend themselves against us. But I digress.
The reason for being against the kind of missile defense system you're talking about is neither 'balance' nor 'playing for a tie,' it is not cost effective.
A missile defense system has to be statistically perfect to work. If it is not, there's no reason to have the system.
If 90% of incoming warheads are destroyed, 10% still make it to their targets.
While that sounds great, at the height of the Cold War, the Soviets and Americans had thousands upon thousands of missiles. 90% of 1000 = 900. 1000 - 900 = 100.
100 Soviet nukes would still get through per thousand, even with the best ABM system. So, how do the Soviets break our system? They manufacture more than 20,000 multiple individual re-entry vehicles (MIRVs) to shower the US and overcome the ABM system. At that level, 2000 nukes get through.
How damaging would 2000 nukes be to the United States?
That's the problem with ABM, to counter it, other great powers build up their arsenal to acheive balance, and develop ABM systems of their own. Then we have to build up our arsenal to overcome their systems. Nuclear weapons and ABM systems are very expensive to develop, implement and maintain.
Patrick, you make a reasonable and concise argument. I have no problem with practical considerations for the problems of ABMs and nuclear weapons together. I don't disagree with the technology in intercepting missiles getting better. My thought is that the more that the technology can achieve its intended effects, the more the unattended ones that concern me will come about.
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