Warfare used to be a bloody, up close affair. Men killed other men. Death was instantaneous for many and serious wounds eventually resulted in death for most others.
Now, war is too much like a video game. We have improved our methods of killing; invented weapons that can do maximum damage to other human beings from a great physical distance and left us able to distance ourselves emotionally from an enemy that is a blip on a screen. We can kill people whose faces we never see; we no longer have to wait until we see the whites of their eyes to fire on them. There is no sense of connection that the enemy breathes, loves, and lives just as we do, nothing to make us question war itself. We've made it so much easier to kill and so much easier to wash our hands of that killing. Ironic that in a nation that prides itself on being Christian, we've collectively become Pontius Pilate.For today's Americans, who haven't had a modern war on American soil, war is a distant entity, brought home only when the wounded men and women, now saved due to advances in modern medicine, return to their families. The rest of us feel momentary sympathy for the wounded vets who return missing body parts and who are emotionally battered and damaged, but we forget them pretty soon. When we lie down in our beds, there are no drones flying in the dark over our heads.
Vietnam was the last war (technically a police action) that we had to fully feel and experience. The media was filled with Vietnam. We knew that the average age of the soldiers in Vietnam was 19. We knew how many died each day. We saw their flag draped coffins on the evening news. A lot of us didn't like war and we protested against it. We flashed peace symbols, sang protest songs, and marched in solidarity against not just the Vietnam War, but any war.
We have lost the urgency to prevent war or to put an end to existing wars. Our collective conscience has become as removed from the horrors of war as the remote mechanisms that we use to fight wars. War should be messy and painful. It should make us lose sleep at night. War must be atrocious enough to repulse us, to make us be willing to go to any means necessary to put an end to warfare. The automation of efficient killing makes it far easier to engage in warfare and that's the problem.
"We have lost the urgency to prevent war or to put an end to existing wars."
ReplyDeleteWell, we the people, not them the pols. The GOPers, in one of their thousands of "debates," were having a grand time talking about taking out Iran, as though it would be nothing more dangerous than having a guy from Orkin do the job.
I was with my nephew, who was deployed in Afghanistan last summer, over this Thanksgiving weekend, and I think spending time with people who actually, y'know, do the dirty work of war would be instructive to those who look on it as a macho way to take out whole civilizations because we don't like their mullahs.
Sister,
ReplyDeleteAfter reading your post (which challenges us to consider ethical and moral implications– as does every topic you bring to us), I had to allow myself time to think about this before responding.
In a larger sense, the topic is not just about remote warfare but about how the American public has become increasingly insulated from war – for different reasons but always with the same consequence. During the Vietnam War era, I recall, casualty figures were dutifully reported on the evening news – same as today. What made Vietnam different, however, was the draft that exposed far more American families to war and the anxiety of losing a loved one. In contrast, we have an all-volunteer military today.
During the Iraq War, the Bush/Cheney administration prohibited the videotaping of casket ceremonies – another significant change from the Vietnam era that further insulates the American public from the emotional impacts of war. Furthermore, the Iraq War was the most out-sourced in history.
I believe this statistic may be accurate: Less than 1% of American households have a family member serving in today’s volunteer military; thus fewer families impacted by war and policy decisions, and a far smaller percentage of the electorate highly motivated to hold our leaders accountable.
Finally, one more concern: President Eisenhower’s admonitions about the military-industrial complex more than a half-century ago … in an era of globalization, out-sourcing, and high unemployment.
These days, there are a number of worrisome trends conspiring at the same time: The public increasingly insulated from the horrors of war, remote warfare in the form of robotics, and war profiteering within the private sector. If the only high-value jobs left are in the military-industrial complex, how will these trends skew future policy-making?
Along with remote controlling it, could we also outsource the personnel much as we've done with manufacturing? I mean, it worked for the Romans, at least for a while. And some of those Asians and South and Central Americans could use the work. The pay wouldn't be too bad. And it could be done on Chinese credit...
ReplyDeleteSheria,
ReplyDeleteExcellent thoughts. I think it's only going to get worse -- we really are going in the direction of total automation. I like the idea that we might save lives in necessary battles, but at the same time, we might become so powerful that nobody -- absolutely nobody in the world -- will be able to oppose us at all. That just can't be healthy for us. Acton's Law isn't likely to go away, and since about half the country, to borrow a line from Mencken, won't be satisfied until they've elected a downright idiot their leader, absolute military power could end tragically for us and anybody who dares to oppose us for any reason.