Killshot

I heard a piece on NPR about the Wikileaks controversy where a video from an Apache helicopter shows the U.S. military killing a number of people, including two reporters for Reuters.

The discussion was about how new military methods have almost turned war into a video game, removing soldiers physically and also emotionally from what they're doing so that they feel less when they kill.

Is this really the case? In some ways, this is the aim of the military. It's not a soldier's job to determine if the mission is correct, it's his job to carry out commands. He has some discretion, of course. The military doesn't want zombies, but people who think on their feet. But short of not doing something clearly wrong, it is a soldier's job to kill on command.

But does that mean that turning a soldier's job into playing a (very real) video game makes it easier to kill? I question this. They're still human beings, and they understand what they're doing is for keeps.

Let's put it this way. For a long time, the military has been coming up with more efficient and deadly ways to kill (while protecting their own people better). But looking at history, I don't notice wars being somehow less bloody when they were more face-to-face. The first half of the twentieth century saw millions die, and we didn't have "video games" back then. Even before innovations like planes, and guns, when it was hard (by today's standards) to kill, usually by stabbing or clubbing or hacking, there were countless deaths in battle. Indeed, anthropological evidence suggests when humans were living in smaller tribes they were more likely to die of violence than in today's world.

So yes, we train our soldiers to kill, and kill as efficiently as possible. But while the weapons may be more horrible, I doubt the soldiers are. It may be their job, but I don't think it's become a more casual thing.