National Space Policy: NSDD-42 (issued on July 4th, 1982)

(Stuf4) wrote:

From Scott Kozel:

Three satellites would have been sufficient to fully test the concept.

They started launching in 1978, and by the time they were finished in
1996, the Cold War had been over for five years. That shows that they
put hardly any priority on GPS.

I would agree that GPS was not a top priority program in the early
years. I don't see how that in any way refutes the point that GPS was
funded because of its military justification. (Again, it was seen as
a force multiplier, not as some necessary vital element that the
military could not do without.)

You have failed to post any credible cites that GPS was funded because
of "military justification" or that it was a "force multiplier".

The low priority on implementation that I cited above, strongly argues
against it.

And I find your criticism of "military myths" particularly curious,
especially since you have stated that you have a wealth of background
on the matter. Here are quotes from a speech prepared by Eisenhower
himself:

...cited five "penalties" of the nation's obsolete highway network:
the annual death and injury toll, the waste of billions of dollars
in detours and traffic jams, the clogging of the nation's courts
with highway-related suits, the inefficiency in the transportation
of goods, and "the appalling inadequacies to meet the demands of
catastrophe or defense, should an atomic war come."

Of the "five penalties" cited in one Eisenhower speech, four were purely
civil and only one was for defense; and each of those four "civil
penalties" were -huge-.

It seems we can agree that the threat of atomic war was a concern.
That would make the disagreement a matter of degree.

A 'catastrophe' could include a natural disaster such as a hurricane or
an earthquake or a flood.

When I buy a car, its use for evacuation in case of atomic war would
have a greater than zero weighting among all the other reasons for
buying the car, but that weighting would be less than 1% when weighed
against all the other routine uses for the car, and when considering
that the car would be useless if millions of other cars in the
metropolitan area were trying to do the same thing (nuclear evacuation).

That is a good illustration of the relative importance of new highways
for nuclear evacuation, the relative weighting of importance would be
tiny, and no urban freeway would ever be built for that reason alone.

You have piped in with an extended commentary to "set the record
straight with respect to Interstate highways" and then you support
your points with a webpage that tells us about the threat of atomic
war and "the significance of the interstate system to national
defense".

If you and I can agree with the points made in the very reference you
have provided, then there is nothing else for us to discuss about
highways here.

The fact that something is mentioned somewhere in a long article,
doesn't mean that it was any more than a tiny justification. The
webpage doesn't rank the various justifications.

Of the "five penalties" cited in one Eisenhower speech, four were purely
civil and only one was for defense; and each of those four "civil
penalties" were -huge-. According to that, maybe it could be argued
that of the total justification, that no more than 1/5 (or 20%) of the
total justification was for military reasons.

Most of the military uses would be for the transportation of freight,
personnel, and fighting vehicles, just like how the railroads would be
used.

Of course I read it, Stuffie. You found the word "defense" in there,
and think you can make that the main justification for the Interstate
system, when in fact it was a minor element.

I don't recall ever communicating that defense was the main
justification for this legislation.

You have certainly acted like it, and you posted and defended a webpage
that (wrongly) calls it the "National Defense Highway System", which
makes it sound like all or nearly all of the justification was for
national defense.

By itself it doesn't do anything, and it wasn't completed until well
after the Cold War had ended.

By itself, a nuclear warhead does not "do anything" either. (Except
rust and decay.)

Oh please. When a nuclear warhead explodes, it does one heck of a lot.
A GPS satellite can't hurt anybody.

--
Scott M. Kozel Highway and Transportation History Websites
Virginia/Maryland/Washington, D.C. http://www.roadstothefuture.com
Philadelphia and Delaware Valley http://www.pennways.com

(Stuf4) wrote:

From Scott Kozel:

The analogy is bogus. Police work is within one country, and it deals
with one or a few criminals in an incident, and is not to be compared to
two countries that are at war with each other. Police powers are quite
limited and circumscribed, whereas when two countries are at total war,
all possible resources are mobilized to win the war.

To check the notion of all possible resources being mobilized to win a
war, evidence the fact that no nuclear weapons have been used in
combat since 1945.

There have been no world wars since 1945, either, nor has the U.S.
needed to launch such weapons in any war since 1945. Thank goodness
that the USSR didn't use them.

Police actions are limited and circumscribed. Pentagon actions are
limited and circumscribed. Both use deliberate homicide as a method
of dealing with problems.

Baloney. Police work in the U.S. avoids killing suspects in all but the
rarest of instances. "Good police work" generally means taking the
suspects into custody without injuring the suspects.

Just War Theory is in large part an extension of Law Enforcement
Theory.

Baloney! Thick, too!!

The U.S. was under no obligation whatsoever to use "surgical
precision" on those military targets. The Japanese had 6 months to
surrender after Leyte Gulf, before the first Tokyo fireraid occurred,
and this was at a time when about 300,000 people per month were dying on
the Asian mainland as a direct result of WWII.

Perhaps we could agree that if an alternative solution that did not
involve the targeting of non-combatants was known to be effective,
that we would both prefer it.

Sure, I would agree with that. Of course, the Japanese has the power to
stop the war, or to have never started it the first place.

Economic expansion is not to be compared with attempted world conquest
of a dozen countries by military force.

How do you think America got to be dominant over the entire planet?
Military conquest of the British, Spanish, Iroquois, Apache,
Hawaiians, etc.

The U.S. did not "conquer" the British, the U.S. colonies declared
independence from Britain in 1776, and Britain started a war in an
effort to bring the colonies back into Britain.

The Spanish did their share of attacks against the U.S. in the 1800s.
There was no U.S. military conquest of Hawaii.

A point I have made in the past...

If you take a globe and stick a pin hole in every place that a US
military base has been built, the Earth starts to look like Swiss
cheese.

Much fewer bases than 15 years ago. It is also hilarious that you
mention Britain, without any mention of their centuries of empire
building.

What about what China and the Indochina countries had to say about the
"Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere"?

Leads me to wonder how the phrase "manifest destiny" translates to
their languages.

China and Japan have histories that go back over 3,000 years, with
numerous military conflicts being fought there over that time period.
They were fighting wars 2,500 years before the U.S. even existed in its
earliest form.

The U.S. with its few centuries of existence is a young nation in
comparison.

If the Allies had to invade Japan by land, it was estimated that they
would have lost between 150,000 and a million lives, and that the
Japanese would have lost (additionally) between 3 million and 20 million
lives. These were reasonable estimates, and the war as prosecuted by
the Allies avoided such a land invasion.

Obviously Stuffie would have preferred to see the U.S. lose far more
lives in WWII that it did. Stuffie doesn't care about the Japanese,
either.

An alternative conclusion that can be gathered from the points I have
offered is that I value all life.

Your complaints about the prosecution of WWII, would indicate that your
method of the U.S. fighting the war would have led to vastly higher
casualties on both sides, and you seem unconcerned about that.

From Scott Kozel:
(Stuf4) wrote:

From Scott Kozel:

Three satellites would have been sufficient to fully test the concept.

They started launching in 1978, and by the time they were finished in
1996, the Cold War had been over for five years. That shows that they
put hardly any priority on GPS.

I would agree that GPS was not a top priority program in the early
years. I don't see how that in any way refutes the point that GPS was
funded because of its military justification. (Again, it was seen as
a force multiplier, not as some necessary vital element that the
military could not do without.)

You have failed to post any credible cites that GPS was funded because
of "military justification" or that it was a "force multiplier".

The low priority on implementation that I cited above, strongly argues
against it.

I don't see how the gradual implementation of GPS makes *any* argument
against its military primacy. I have provided references from the
Aerospace Corporation, among others. If you'd like to provide support
for the view you are promoting, I'd be glad to consider it.

And I find your criticism of "military myths" particularly curious,
especially since you have stated that you have a wealth of background
on the matter. Here are quotes from a speech prepared by Eisenhower
himself:

...cited five "penalties" of the nation's obsolete highway network:
the annual death and injury toll, the waste of billions of dollars
in detours and traffic jams, the clogging of the nation's courts
with highway-related suits, the inefficiency in the transportation
of goods, and "the appalling inadequacies to meet the demands of
catastrophe or defense, should an atomic war come."

Of the "five penalties" cited in one Eisenhower speech, four were purely
civil and only one was for defense; and each of those four "civil
penalties" were -huge-.

It seems we can agree that the threat of atomic war was a concern.
That would make the disagreement a matter of degree.

A 'catastrophe' could include a natural disaster such as a hurricane or
an earthquake or a flood.

I agree completely.

When I buy a car, its use for evacuation in case of atomic war would
have a greater than zero weighting among all the other reasons for
buying the car, but that weighting would be less than 1% when weighed
against all the other routine uses for the car, and when considering
that the car would be useless if millions of other cars in the
metropolitan area were trying to do the same thing (nuclear evacuation).

That is a good illustration of the relative importance of new highways
for nuclear evacuation, the relative weighting of importance would be
tiny, and no urban freeway would ever be built for that reason alone.

Lets take a closer look at that very analogy...

To meet your transportation needs, say that all you need is a sedan.
But to cover that 1% evacuation case, you will need a Hummer.

Interstate highways are like the Hummers of road construction.
Improvement of regular roads could have met basic transportation
needs.

Today we see interstates as a necessity. And for those who buy a
Hummer, I expect that their lifestyle adjusts so that they begin to
see it as a necessity as well.



A key point that I haven't seen mentioned yet is that defense may have
been used as a justification to federalize the funding for road
construction, when others saw this as a function of individual states.

....along the lines of how the federal government got into the realm of
drug enforcement through the taxation justification:

"1927 - The Bureau of Prohibition became a separate unit within the
Treasury Department."

"1972 - The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) became a
separate Bureau within the Treasury Department."

(Quotes from http://www.atf.gov/labs/history.htm)


Defense, like taxation, is clearly in the realm of the federal
government. If you want to federalize funding for a highway system,
this can be done by generating a defense justification.

You have piped in with an extended commentary to "set the record
straight with respect to Interstate highways" and then you support
your points with a webpage that tells us about the threat of atomic
war and "the significance of the interstate system to national
defense".

If you and I can agree with the points made in the very reference you
have provided, then there is nothing else for us to discuss about
highways here.

The fact that something is mentioned somewhere in a long article,
doesn't mean that it was any more than a tiny justification. The
webpage doesn't rank the various justifications.

Of the "five penalties" cited in one Eisenhower speech, four were purely
civil and only one was for defense; and each of those four "civil
penalties" were -huge-. According to that, maybe it could be argued
that of the total justification, that no more than 1/5 (or 20%) of the
total justification was for military reasons.

Most of the military uses would be for the transportation of freight,
personnel, and fighting vehicles, just like how the railroads would be
used.

Going back to GPS, a point made much earlier is how civil operators
outnumber military operators by orders of magnitude (and the trend is
widening that gap). But such statistics do not discount the military
funding justification.

I'm not aware of any R&D dollars spent by Cadillac in the 1970s to
develop GPS/Onstar.

The civilian beneficiaries are a fallout (so to speak) of the military
push.

I am bringing this full circle to the GPS case for the purpose of
providing a balance to the view you provided regarding civilian
benefit from interstate highways.

Military use may be a tiny fraction, but that does not necessarily
mean that the military significance was proportionately tiny.

Of course I read it, Stuffie. You found the word "defense" in there,
and think you can make that the main justification for the Interstate
system, when in fact it was a minor element.

I don't recall ever communicating that defense was the main
justification for this legislation.

You have certainly acted like it, and you posted and defended a webpage
that (wrongly) calls it the "National Defense Highway System", which
makes it sound like all or nearly all of the justification was for
national defense.

Acted like it? I doubt that any direct quote can be found to support
that, since I have never held that as a view of mine.

Perhaps you are confusing my position on highways with my position on
GPS:

- Military justification was a primary driver for GPS research and
funding.
- Military justification was _a_ driver for funding interstate
highways.

By itself it doesn't do anything, and it wasn't completed until well
after the Cold War had ended.

By itself, a nuclear warhead does not "do anything" either. (Except
rust and decay.)

Oh please. When a nuclear warhead explodes, it does one heck of a lot.
A GPS satellite can't hurt anybody.

A GPS satellite can't hurt anybody?!

GPS satellites are used to kill people (per design) by the thousands.

I'm not aware of a single person who has been killed by a nuclear
warhead in a very long time.


Considering the time period starting from the first GPS satellite
launch, it's clear to me that the radiation being emited from GPS
satellites has a track record of being far more deadly than the
radiation from nuclear weapons.


~ CT

From Scott Kozel:
(Stuf4) wrote:

From Scott Kozel:

Police actions are limited and circumscribed. Pentagon actions are
limited and circumscribed. Both use deliberate homicide as a method
of dealing with problems.

Baloney. Police work in the U.S. avoids killing suspects in all but the
rarest of instances. "Good police work" generally means taking the
suspects into custody without injuring the suspects.

I seem to remember a quote from Sun Tzu about the best war being one
that is won without fighting (or something to that effect).

Just War Theory is in large part an extension of Law Enforcement
Theory.

Baloney! Thick, too!!

..

The U.S. was under no obligation whatsoever to use "surgical
precision" on those military targets. The Japanese had 6 months to
surrender after Leyte Gulf, before the first Tokyo fireraid occurred,
and this was at a time when about 300,000 people per month were dying on
the Asian mainland as a direct result of WWII.

Perhaps we could agree that if an alternative solution that did not
involve the targeting of non-combatants was known to be effective,
that we would both prefer it.

Sure, I would agree with that. Of course, the Japanese has the power to
stop the war, or to have never started it the first place.

And I would point out that the US had the power to prevent war as
well. The concept is known as pacifism. As captured in the popular
1960s koan:

What if they gave a war and no one came?

Pearl Harbor was an attack. It was the violent response from the US
that turned the conflict into a war.

Economic expansion is not to be compared with attempted world conquest
of a dozen countries by military force.

How do you think America got to be dominant over the entire planet?
Military conquest of the British, Spanish, Iroquois, Apache,
Hawaiians, etc.

The U.S. did not "conquer" the British, the U.S. colonies declared
independence from Britain in 1776, and Britain started a war in an
effort to bring the colonies back into Britain.

Losing a war is otherwise known as being conquered.

The Spanish did their share of attacks against the U.S. in the 1800s.
There was no U.S. military conquest of Hawaii.

If you are saying that Queen Liliuokalani happily disintigrated her
nation so that it could become a US territory, then I would question
the purpose of the US Marine landing.

Here's some info on the we're-sorry-for-conquering-your-country
resolution signed by President Clinton in 1993:

http://www.hawaii-nation.org/publawsum.html

A point I have made in the past...

If you take a globe and stick a pin hole in every place that a US
military base has been built, the Earth starts to look like Swiss
cheese.

Much fewer bases than 15 years ago. It is also hilarious that you
mention Britain, without any mention of their centuries of empire
building.

The British Empire is so widely known that I consider it cliche. I'm
not sure what you see as so amusing here.

It is the US Empire that goes so under-noticed, and I choose to
highlight it as an effort toward a balanced view of history.

If the Allies had to invade Japan by land, it was estimated that they
would have lost between 150,000 and a million lives, and that the
Japanese would have lost (additionally) between 3 million and 20 million
lives. These were reasonable estimates, and the war as prosecuted by
the Allies avoided such a land invasion.

Obviously Stuffie would have preferred to see the U.S. lose far more
lives in WWII that it did. Stuffie doesn't care about the Japanese,
either.

An alternative conclusion that can be gathered from the points I have
offered is that I value all life.

Your complaints about the prosecution of WWII, would indicate that your
method of the U.S. fighting the war would have led to vastly higher
casualties on both sides, and you seem unconcerned about that.

I have not been complaining about the targeting of civilians. It is a
simple fact of history.

I have no personal method of fighting past wars. I avoid spending my
time speculating on alternative histories. My goal is to learn
history accurately so that I can apply those lessons to present and
future situations.


~ CT

(Stuf4) wrote:

From Scott Kozel:

Police work in the U.S. avoids killing suspects in all but the
rarest of instances. "Good police work" generally means taking the
suspects into custody without injuring the suspects.

I seem to remember a quote from Sun Tzu about the best war being one
that is won without fighting (or something to that effect).

If there is no fighting, there is no war.

Sure, I would agree with that. Of course, the Japanese has the power to
stop the war, or to have never started it the first place.

And I would point out that the US had the power to prevent war as
well. The concept is known as pacifism. As captured in the popular
1960s koan:

What if they gave a war and no one came?

Pearl Harbor was an attack. It was the violent response from the US
that turned the conflict into a war.

You're sick. Japan had been fighting a war of conquest in China since
1932, and in 1941 they decided to expand it to taking over the
territories and countries in the western half of the Pacific, and
beyond. At the same time that Pearl Harbor was attacked, Japan launched
attacks and invasions all over Southeast Asia and the western Pacific,
including invading the U.S. territories and the allies of the U.S.

Your "pacifism" is called "suicide".

The U.S. did not "conquer" the British, the U.S. colonies declared
independence from Britain in 1776, and Britain started a war in an
effort to bring the colonies back into Britain.

Losing a war is otherwise known as being conquered.

That's nonsense. Britain attacked the U.S. colonies, the U.S. colonies
defeated the attack. Britain was not "conquered", they still had their
nation, and the U.S. colonies did not attempt to invade Britain.

Much fewer bases than 15 years ago. It is also hilarious that you
mention Britain, without any mention of their centuries of empire
building.

The British Empire is so widely known that I consider it cliche. I'm
not sure what you see as so amusing here.

It is the US Empire that goes so under-noticed, and I choose to
highlight it as an effort toward a balanced view of history.

Your revisionist view of history, you mean. There is no "US Empire".

Your complaints about the prosecution of WWII, would indicate that your
method of the U.S. fighting the war would have led to vastly higher
casualties on both sides, and you seem unconcerned about that.

I have not been complaining about the targeting of civilians. It is a
simple fact of history.

It's a lie. The U.S. did not target civilians, they targeted military
targets. The fact that Japan had civilians intermingled with military
targets, made Japan responsible for any harm that came to their
civilians.

From Scott Kozel:
(Stuf4) wrote:

From Scott Kozel:

Police work in the U.S. avoids killing suspects in all but the
rarest of instances. "Good police work" generally means taking the
suspects into custody without injuring the suspects.

I seem to remember a quote from Sun Tzu about the best war being one
that is won without fighting (or something to that effect).

If there is no fighting, there is no war.

The point made was that both police and military use deliberate
homicide as a method of dealing with problems. I see this as a simple
fact.

Sure the police will often avoid killing. Sun Tzu's point is that the
military does too.

Sure, I would agree with that. Of course, the Japanese has the power to
stop the war, or to have never started it the first place.

And I would point out that the US had the power to prevent war as
well. The concept is known as pacifism. As captured in the popular
1960s koan:

What if they gave a war and no one came?

Pearl Harbor was an attack. It was the violent response from the US
that turned the conflict into a war.

You're sick. Japan had been fighting a war of conquest in China since
1932, and in 1941 they decided to expand it to taking over the
territories and countries in the western half of the Pacific, and
beyond. At the same time that Pearl Harbor was attacked, Japan launched
attacks and invasions all over Southeast Asia and the western Pacific,
including invading the U.S. territories and the allies of the U.S.

Your "pacifism" is called "suicide".

The term 'suicide' negates the responsibility of the aggressor in the
killing.


But I do agree with your points about how violent the Japanese were
prior to Pearl Harbor.

....and a balanced view of history would recognize how violent the
United States was as well. That is, after all, how the country
expanded from Atlantic coastal states across to the Pacific and over
to Hawaii and the Philippines (a US territory when bombed by the
Japanese at the same time as Pearl).


So who is the enemy? Someone like John Lennon might say that violence
itself is the enemy.

This brand of Lennonism challenges us to "imagine there's no country".


The U.S. did not "conquer" the British, the U.S. colonies declared
independence from Britain in 1776, and Britain started a war in an
effort to bring the colonies back into Britain.

Losing a war is otherwise known as being conquered.

That's nonsense. Britain attacked the U.S. colonies, the U.S. colonies
defeated the attack. Britain was not "conquered", they still had their
nation, and the U.S. colonies did not attempt to invade Britain.

A war takes place. Those who submit are called the conquered. Those
who are submitted to are called the victors. Basic terminology here.

The territory that Britain lost was those 13 colonies. This was
conquered territory (formerly part of the British Empire, subsequently
the United States).


Notice how after the war, droves of citizens from those former British
colonies packed up and moved from their homes in Connecticut,
Virginia, etc, to places like Canada. They left because the British
had been conquered.

_They_ had been conquered.


Much fewer bases than 15 years ago. It is also hilarious that you
mention Britain, without any mention of their centuries of empire
building.

The British Empire is so widely known that I consider it cliche. I'm
not sure what you see as so amusing here.

It is the US Empire that goes so under-noticed, and I choose to
highlight it as an effort toward a balanced view of history.

Your revisionist view of history, you mean. There is no "US Empire".

A country that starts as a coastal nation and then kills off its
neighbors as it expands to become a continental nation and then
expands some more after that by nationalizing far away lands is what
is typically known as an empire.

Consider those humble beginnings as a coastal sliver of a nation.
Even then places like New York were boasting of reign over adjacent
nations like the Iroquois.

What name does New York boast? The Empire State.

American buildings in Manhattan are seen by those outside the United
States as symbols of imperial tyranny. In the 18th century, those
symbols of empire were built of wood and stone. By the beginning of
the 21st century, those symbols of empire had been built high enough
to scrape the sky.

Your complaints about the prosecution of WWII, would indicate that your
method of the U.S. fighting the war would have led to vastly higher
casualties on both sides, and you seem unconcerned about that.

I have not been complaining about the targeting of civilians. It is a
simple fact of history.

It's a lie. The U.S. did not target civilians, they targeted military
targets. The fact that Japan had civilians intermingled with military
targets, made Japan responsible for any harm that came to their
civilians.

(Points previously made about indiscriminate weapons such as
incindiaries and nukes.)


~ CT