Tuesday, January 23, 2018

Mideast drones in Kansas

Combat has its particulars. A view. A target. A pulling of the trigger. It is nice, every once in a while, to slow down a bit and consider those real-time particulars. Some of those particulars, as in the middle of Kansas, require that the participating unit have a chaplain to ease the long-distance dis-ease felt by a unit paid to run the U.S. drones in the Middle East.

Who is the enemy and who thought this stuff up? And, once having thought it up, who presses forward into action that will take human lives. Is there a war without "collateral damage?" Is there really a reason or reasoning? If everyone is cheering, who will find the man or woman in tears? Seriously.

Anyway, this Guardian article, while a bit thin, is a story about particulars. The intoxicating marvel of machines is that they are perfect. The intoxicating marvel of human beings is that they are not.

1 comment:

  1. So many parents worried about the time their kids wasted playing video games instead of doing school work to prepare them for the world. Little did they know those kids were being trained for military roles.

    But Orson Scott Card foretold it in 1985 with his book Enders Game. Here's a quote from the wikipedia page... "It has also become suggested reading for many military organizations, including the United States Marine Corps."

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ender%27s_Game

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