Slashdot Mirror
What Happens In Vegas Happens In Afghanistan
theodp writes "After the morning commute from his Las Vegas apartment, Air Force captain Sam Nelson sits in a padded chair inside a low, tan building in Nevada, controlling a heavily armed drone aircraft soaring over Afghanistan, prepared to kill another human being 7,500 miles away if necessary. Welcome to the surreal world of drone pilots, who have a front-row seat on war from half a world away. 'On the drive out here, you get yourself ready to enter the compartment of your life that is flying combat,' explained retired Col. Chris Chambliss. 'And on the drive home, you get ready for that part of your life that's going to be the soccer game.' No wonder why the Air Force is interested in the Xbox LIVE crowd and the Army's opened a new arcade recruitment center!"
Wouldn't it be great if wars could be fought just by the assholes who started them?
I'm sure we'll hear lots about the technology, but when you're in the field, surrounded by your fellow soldiers, then blowing the shit out of a car full of people is a shared experience. You can rely on your friends and fellow soldiers to help you deal with the fact that you just helped end a bunch of lives. Yes, it was the right thing. Yes, it was you or them. But all the justifications aside there's an emotional price to be paid that every person who's been in combat or seen it, or similar.
Now we have guys sitting in rooms filled with computer screens blowing people up, and is there anyone there to talk to about it? Can they light a cigarette after, put a fist in the wall, and say "Goddamnit, I wish there'd been another way!" No. You're stuck in a sterile environment, air conditioned, quiet, and after blowing the fuck out of someone you can get up and go get yourself a soda from the vend, grab your coat, file some paperwork, and drive home.
Huge disclaimer -- I'm not in the military, I don't know what these guys to for stress relief, or to deal with the emotional consequences of what they're doing. But I do know the dangers of becoming emotionally numb to violence, and without advocating for or against what the military is doing, I want to ask -- what are we doing to help these soldiers deal with those issues? For that matter, is it even an issue? I don't really know. But I think it helps to look someone in the eye if you have to kill them. To know they were a real person. To remember what you've done -- even if it was the right thing to do, even if there was no other choice, it's a statement about the value of human life.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
We start to treat killing the enemy the way we treat killing chickens at the Perdue packing plant.
At the most fundamental level, war is still human beings killing other human beings...usually human beings who've never met. One of the damping feed-backs in the war loop is the ugliness and brutality of it. That loop needs more, not fewer, negative feed-backs. Further depersonalization and sterilization of war may incentivize the decision to engage in it.
So, let me get this straight. If a pilot kills them anonymously with drones from thousands of miles away that's war, but if they somehow get to Vegas and kill that drone pilot it's murder? Huh. My double-standard sense is tingling.
The irony of military robots is that we are using them to enforce a global economic system that is based on forcing humans to do labor in exchange for the right to consume the fruits of industry. Why not just build robots to do the work directly instead? Why not use global networks to freely share information about how to make the world a better place that works for everyone? The same is true for nuclear missiles intended to fight over oil and land instead of using the same technologies to build nuclear power plants (or solar ones and wind ones) or to create self-replicating space habitats or seasteads for endless new land. We need to start thinking in 21st century terms now that we have 21st century technology. Otherwise, we will likely accidentally kill ourselves with the tools of abundance.
As Albert Einstein said:
http://rescomp.stanford.edu/~cheshire/EinsteinQuotes.html
"The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking...the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker."
Or further:
http://www.aip.org/history/einstein/nuclear1.htm
"""
"Concern for man himself must always constitute the chief objective of all technological effort -- concern for the big, unsolved problems of how to organize human work and the distribution of commodities in such a manner as to assure that the results of our scientific thinking may be a blessing to mankind, and not a curse."
"""
Or more on how Einstein was more than the disconnected absent minded professor he is made out to be:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/sep2002/eins-s03.shtml
http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/einstein/einsci.htm
It is not the nukes and drones that may kill us all eventually, it is the unrecognized irony.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Collateral damage, hmm, do you even know that term. The greatest risk of all when murdering people by remote control, loss of humanity. It is so easy for them is it, whoops, just blew up a baby and it's mother, whoops, there goes a grandad, whoops, legless child, all so easy to walk away from the carnage with excuses of I was ordered to do it (exactly how do those victims now seek justice). Of course, but the other side is worse (number of casualties caused would tend to indicate this is a lie), of course you can always hide your shame behind faulty hardware, guess shots soon become it veered of course (you chose the hardware, you used the hardware, you are the murderer when your hardware fails).
You implement justice by upholding it not abandoning it. You can only ever capture terrorists, when you arrest them, when you try the in court, when you put up your evidence so that it can be challenged and proven. Murdering suspects in the field is just that, murder. Self defence whilst attempting to conduct arrests is the only excuse to open fire and then that fire must aimed directed and minimised, not a bomb or missile that sometimes targets the individual but always kills any innocent people in the near vicinity.
You can never abandon your human responsibility for the choices you make, when you choose to kill that is your burden, that is your act of evil which you will be forced to account for, failure to refuse to kill when it is not an act of self defence is cowardice.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen