A Thoughtless Engagement

With my friend Tony heading off the join the Army very soon I've been thinking about the role of the military in the modern world a lot lately. I don't know what it says about me, but something about the really old school way of conducting battle seems extremely -- I dunno -- nifty. I'm talking about feudal battles with the ranks of warriors, the open fields, the parley, the codes of conduct, etc. Maybe what is most impressive about that type of combat is that it expedited the whole process. It didn't have to be a fight to the last man; it was much easier to keep civillians, women and children specifically, out of the way of harm; battles were shorter; there was no threat of nuclear weapons; death tolls were dramatically smaller; there was a certain mystique and civillity to the whole proceedings that is noticeably absent from modern military engagements.

And maybe it's just the obscuring lens of time that makes me think this, but it seems like back then people were really fighting for something important to them -- not just getting all nationalized by a rabble-rosuing war mongering president. I seriously doubt that that is actually true (war mongering was obviously a major part of the feudal era), but something about the modern era of fighting stinks.

Delving deeper into the matter, I'm starting to think what bothers me most about modern war is the technology, but, more specifically, the separation between the murderer and the murdered. I've always thought that killing something with a knife would be really emotionally difficult to do -- such close proximity and directness of effect. You plunge a sharp pointy thing into someone and they stop breathing and bleed a lot. Every level of technology not only makes it physically easier to kill someone, but more emotionally distant of an action. With a gun you pull a little trigger and lots of complicated things happen inside this mysterious tool and eventually a hunk of metal is flung out towards whatever you were pointing at. You never even touched the part of the weapon that killed. It only gets worse as technology gets more advanced.

In a bomber plane the pilot presses a little button from inside the cockpit, surrounded by metal and glass, and death is reigned upon victims below. The pilot can't see the victims; they are tiny little ants below and emotionally easier to kill. There is a separation. In battleships missles can be shot from miles and miles and miles away. Somebody turns some keys, programs a target, and launches a really big explosive into a location they can't see. Now there is a computer separating the murderer from the murdered.

As much as I can say purely speculatively (as I've obviously never been in the military myself) it is easier to bring oneself to kill the enemy than it used to be. And it should never be easy to take someone's life. We've put these walls between our actions and their results, all in the name of more efficient and easier killing. It's a lot like refusing to name an animal that will eventually be dinner. We don't want to kill a father, a son, a doctor, a husband, a grocery store clerk who used to paint a lot as a kid. We want to kill a target. An objective. Not a face or a name, but a number. And the farther we are from that person when we kill them the easier it is to forget them -- there's no image of their death to remember.

And that's why I am against using our military in global conflicts. We're not mature enough to take direct responsability for our actions. I think it should take a lot of effort to take someone's life. There should be a lot of thought and, yes, remorse. It should be absolutely necessary to do the deed. But where is the need for that kind of thought when guilt is buffered by miles of ocean and a targeting computer?