Positively Glorious!

This is one of those essays that someone writes only because they have no plans on ever running for any public office, but I think it’s something important and something that needs to be said.

Our soldiers should die in war.

Now, before you fly off the handle and send one of Insitu’s unmanned aircraft to bomb my house, I’m going to lay a bit of foundation.

I’m a disabled veteran who’s served proudly in two branches of the U.S. military. I was in the Army– on the ground– in Operation Desert Storm. My unit was a combat hospital, and I have first hand experience with the stomach sickening experience that is war. So no, I’m not coming at you with some crazy disconnected viewpoint from an Ivory tower. I’m coming at you from the view of someone who was wearing those “boots on the ground.”

And yet, I’d say something at stupid and ignorant as “our soldiers should die in war?”

Yes. Because without that single fact, the toll of war will be so much worse, both physically and spiritually.

To wit, an article from the BBC News: Australia seeks new army robots

Australia has launched a multi-million dollar competition to build a new generation of military robots. The winning design must help soldiers fight by remote control in urban combat zones, defence officials say. The aim is to reduce casualties in urban areas where fighting is unpredictable and treacherous. The competition is being run by Australia’s Defence Science and Technology Organisation in partnership with the US military.

‘Dirty work’

The government wants to develop an “intelligent and fully autonomous system” capable of carrying out dangerous surveillance missions. Senior officials in Canberra have said they hope that unarmed robotic vehicles will do some of the army’s “dirty work” in such hazardous theatres.

There are a few other articles on robotic warcraft such as this one, and there is even news of a robotic war vehicle that consumes things that it drives over as a way to fuel itself. My own community, in fact, is the home of Insitu, the creator of  most of the “autonomous drone aircraft” you often hear of in the news. It is arguably my community’s largest employer.

Disconnection

While it’s easy to sit in a room somewhere and discuss the merits of building autonomous vehicles to do the “dirty work,” I’m very disturbed by the trend. In fact, it quite sickens me.

I feel that we are at a time when we should be seriously seeking to understand the humanity of each other. Other peoples, other cultures, other ways of being. Looking at the news, it may seem that often, the only thing that we have in common with a person on the other side of the planet is that we are both human.

But, I feel it’s important to remember that this commonality is the only thing that is important. The most important thing we have is our humanity, and humanity means that with makes us human.

Sitting in an office, safely controlling a machine that will extinguish the lives of human beings is not going to connect us to another human. It is not going to give us the chance to learn about that person’s worldview, nor is it going to give us the chance to describe ours. There is no conversation. There is only death.

And this is death at no cost to ourselves.

How disconnected do we want to be? Will we accept war without a price?

How difficult is it to kill another person when that person is merely a dot on a computer screen? How difficult is it to kill others when there is no cost, no threat, no danger to yourself? What incentive is there to diplomacy– to the hard work that is conversation, discussion, acceptance of another’s point of view? What incentive is there for the difficult road of human to human communication when the “dirty work” of just killing them is done by a machine?

We, America and the Western World, talk so broadly about freedom and human rights. But to believe in human rights, we must first be human. Humanity does not lie in making machines do the dirty work. For humanity, the most obvious cost of war may  eventually become merely financial. This is terrifying.

Our soldiers should die in war.

In fact, it is imperative that they do. It is, quite possibly, one of the main things that will keep our humanity safe. Because if there is no cost to war– no cost to ourselves– then war will not only continue, it will grow. It will be far too easy.

War should be devastating. War should be painful. War should be the hardest thing we can imagine. Because war should be something that we avoid at all cost. Imagine the world if diplomacy was easy and war was something that absolutely sickened every living human.

Never should we think– as we have already– that war is simply a line item, a checklist, a thing to be “mission accomplished” in a couple months as a way to swing public opinion. War should not be a financial item. It should be the most spiritually, physically, and emotionally difficult thing we have ever done.

War has already become far too easy, and yet, rather than becoming more difficult, I fear it is now only becoming easier.