Fedr808 said:
And how cant eh drones be controversial? The way theyre used can be, but they are all the same, and act upon their commands to the letter, how can they be controversial? The use of them CAN be.
A very good question. I'd start off with notions like the nature and purpose of warfare.
Once upon a time, people just beat the shit out of each other with sticks and stones. That's how it was for most of human history. Swords, clubs, you name it: "No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between his shoulder blades will seriously cramp his style." (Steven Brust)
Guns? When the Americans decided to shoot the British officers instead of the rank-and-file, there was an outcry. That's not the fair or proper way to do a war, shouted the redcoats. You're supposed to line up within easy targeting distance, and then simultaneously shoot one another.
Eventually it became the "
Bravery of Being Out of Range":
Hey bartender, over here;
Two more shots and two more beers.
Sir, turn up the TV sound:
The war has started on the ground.
Just love those laser-guided bombs;
They're really great for righting wrongs:
You hit the target and win the game
From bars three-thousand miles away.
Three-thousand miles away
We play the game
With the bravery of being out of range.
We zap and maim
With the bravery of being out of range.
We strafe the train
With the bravery of being out of range.
We gain terrain
With the bravery of being out of range.
Yeah, with the bravery of being out of range.
We play the game
With the bravery of being out of range.
Drones are just another stage. I mean, think of a science-fiction future for a minute. Tiny, lethal drones swarming around one another, first at the asteroid belt, then at the moon, then in orbit, and finally they come to the cities. Spend however many quintillions of dollars you can building, programming, and arming the robots.
People are still going to have to fight. What, you're going to reach the enemy capital and the people are just going to say, "Oh, well your drones beat our drones up in orbit, so we surrender."
And, yes, I admit there is a
certain sense of logic in it, but why not just have the heads of state get together and play a round-robin chess tournament, then? It's pretty much the same thing at a fraction of the cost.
And then on Monday, you get an email saying President Douchebag is out and Premier Turdman from whatever country is now in charge. And on Wednesday, another one comes around saying that an insurgent has beaten Turdman in a head-to-head high-stakes game of lowball stud, so Bob Jankowski of St. Louis, Missouri, is now the President of All Things.
At least until Friday when his wife files for divorce and claims a community property stake in the Democratic People's Free Republic of Earth.
I mean, it would be
easier that way. But there does theoretically come a point at which war is reduced to a phallic exercise in self-caricature, and the whole purpose is just to blow shit up.
I think of
Wilde's criticism of people and charity:
They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping the poor alive; or, in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the poor.
But this is not a solution: it is an aggravation of the difficulty.
For Wilde, "The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible".
It doesn't make for a straight transliteration to warfare, but something similar is afoot. In attempting to reduce the human costs of warfare, we trivialize the whole idea of war. A bunch of robots shooting the fuck out of one another? Hell, people pay for tickets to watch that sort of thing.
The proper aim, as such, is to reconstruct society on such a basis that warfare will be unnecessary. Not that it will happen anytime soon, but keeping war alive and amusing isn't going to do jack shit to bring peace and stability to the human endeavor.
____________________
Notes:
Wilde, Oscar. "The soul of man under Socialism". 1891. Flag.Blackened.net. September 14, 2009. http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/hist_texts/wilde_soul.html
