Wars up to the present have been horrors, but at least they contained within themselves certain restraints. Combatants know they can be hurt, maimed and killed. Non combatants know they can suffer the same injuries, plus destruction of their homes, livelihoods, displacement, starvation and refugee status. Combat is a very
personal experience, often involving face to face confrontation or observation of the effects of aerial and artillery bombardment. Survivors of war have deep motivations to avoid repeating the experience for themselves or their fellows.
The advances of science are gradually converting war into an electronic contest in which attacks will be conducted from afar, managed by computers controlling robots
at the command of operators who have not even the remotest physical contact with the resulting deaths and injuries, and are at no risk to themselves. It is becoming a
computer game, but with real, not virtual victims.
Roger Cohen, in an opinion column in the Nov. 12 issue of the New York Times entitled
"Of Fruit Flies and Drones" gives a vivid analysis of this scenario. He explains how science, using information about how Fruit Flies orient themselves in their space, have developed drone planes which, directed from afar can inflict death and injury on
an enemy in some remote location, with the operator who pressed the button then going home to dinner as if after a round of golf. The director of the operation is
godlike, sending a thunderbolt from the sky to extinguish a life, as easily as turning off a lamp switch.
At that point in the descent of man, war will become a banal pursuit, with the
most highly developed scientific society determining the fate of mankind. Perhaps the
extinction of our species will come about in that fashion, instead of by ecological
destruction?
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2 comments:
Destructive drones are not new. I experienced them in a crude form – but still deadly - sixty five years ago when I was a young boy in Paris during WW2. During the last few months, desperate Germany, invaded from the South by the American Forces and from the East by the Russian Army, kept sending V2 ballistic missiles over London and V1 rockets over Paris.
The V1 was like a big long bomb with two stubby wings and a small rocket engine in the back. After its launch in Germany it could travel several hundred miles.
Suddenly you would hear one coming. It sounded like a big flying motorcycle. As long as you heard the noise you were in no danger. But a sudden silence meant the V2 rocket had run out of fuel and it was now gliding down. The next ten seconds were tense.
JMG
Look how far we have "progressed".
We no longer have random targeting.
We can Put the bomb into a specific chimney, after guiding it acurately ever meter of its flight. We can even change targets
in a moment, even follow a human target into an outhouse. How wondrous are the feats of science, and how hideous they make the soul
of man.
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