Theos-Talk Archives (April 1998 Message tt00599)

Dear brothers,

Still feel a need to amplify the rationale of the defense shelters build by
C.U.T.

Their purpose is not to go underground because the end of the world is near.
On the contrary, they are build to secure the survival of all that we hold
dear to pass on to the countless generations to come. Our organization has
payed a heavy price for this sacrifice. Not only financially, but foremost
in the way we are perceived through the media.

Admitted, mistakes were made, but to hold those against us as an easy way to
dismiss what we can offer to help humanity's upliftment and enlightenment is
comparable to what HPB's enemies did in her days (and still do) with
depicting her as a fraud. Sorry for dragging in the Old Sphinx, but the
whole situation has 'deja vu' written all over it.

Nevertheless it teaches a good lesson about image-making and how to deal
with that. It sharpenned my discrimination and commitment to truth and
compassion. Wish the TS would do something progressive and controversial to
provoke some bashing, which might wake it up, though it probably will first
have to wake up before doing something imaginative again.

Anyway, like to present this little article from a conservative source on
the taboo subject of Star Wars.

>Conservative Viewpoint
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*
>April 28, 1998 Source: "Conservative-News On The Web"
>
>WHY NOT FINISH THE JOB?
>
>By Mona Charen
>
>In times of peace and prosperity, it is difficult to focus people's minds
>on seemingly distant threats or dangers. For a few brief hours last month,
>we thought we had detected a potentially catastrophic meteor heading
>Earth's way, but that turned out to be a false alarm. Had our meteoric
>menace been real, it would certainly have given a boost to space-based
>defense funding. But now, we've returned to our sleepy complacency.
>
>There are other dangers out there. They don't grab headlines like an
>intergalactic stalker, but they could threaten huge numbers of Americans
>with nuclear, chemical and biological death.
>
>Most Americans are under the comforting misimpression that the United
>States already has the means to defend itself against ballistic missiles.
>When Gen. Charles Horner, former head of U.S. Space Command, took visitors
>on tours of Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado, most were surprised to learn
>that the United States has the capacity to detect a missile launched at our
>country but absolutely no ability to stop it. Our only option is that of
>retaliation.
>
>When President Ronald Reagan proposed an anti-missile defense system to
>protect the American population in the 1980s, he was met with disdain and
>furious opposition from the Democratic Party and the opinion elites. His
>idea was scorned as needlessly provocative as well as technically
>impossible. What Reagan called the Strategic Defense Initiative was
>immediately caricatured and dismissed as "Star Wars."
>
>When the Soviet empire collapsed in the early 1990s, the Bush
>administration scaled back funding for anti-missile defenses, focusing only
>on battlefield systems such as the Patriot missile, which was deployed
>(rather unsuccessfully, as it turns out) against Iraqi Scuds in the Gulf
War.
>
>But while the Soviet Union is gone, the threat from missile attack is not.
>As former CIA Director R. James Woolsey put it on a videotape distributed
>by the Center for Security Policy, "It's as if we'd been in a 45-year
>struggle with a dragon. We have killed the dragon and now find ourselves in
>a jungle full of poisonous snakes. In a way, the dragon was easier to keep
>track of."
>
>And Woolsey is specific. Who are the snakes? "Iran, Iraq, North Korea,
>Hezbollah, Om Shimriku." All of these nations and groups, with technical
>help and materiel from Russia and China, have well-developed missile
>programs. Iraq and Libya, of course, are seeking to acquire every weapon of
>mass destruction they can lay their hands on.
>
>We continue to stand naked before missiles launched by any aggressor, as
>well as those launched accidentally. And we do so as a matter of national
>policy.
>
>Since the signing of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 1972, it has been
>official U.S. policy not to defend our population against missile attack.
>The doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction was our shield.
>
>Whatever the merits of that approach during the Cold War (Reagan found it
>immoral), we are now living by a treaty signed with a nation that no longer
>exists.
>
>Moreover, as a front-page story in The Washington Post makes clear, the
>investment in missile defense technologies has taken us seven-eighths of
>the way down the road to a deployable system. We need only to finish the
>job. "There are no more scientific unknowns from this point," Shell Wald, a
>Raytheon weapons specialist, told The Washington Post. "It's just a matter
>of straight engineering. We are so close. I could taste it. It's no longer
>a question of if, but when."
>
>When, though, is a political question, not a military or technological one.
>The Clinton administration would prefer to rely on arms-control agreements,
>like the Chemical Weapons Treaty, and limits on technology transfers.
>(Though the recent decision by the president to approve the transfer of
>missile guidance technology to China, against the advice of the Pentagon,
>would seem to vitiate that claim.)
>
>Treaties have never inhibited aggressors in the past and will not do so in
>the future. By not moving forward on missile defense, we are wasting the
>billions already invested and failing the American people.
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>