Trump clears CIA to issue drone strikes

[Belsnickel]

(03-16-2017, 12:22 PM)Benton Wrote: I guess I just don't see the point of putting "your" combatants in harms way if it can be avoided. Life is sacred. Or at least should be treated as such. Anything to reduce the number of causalities on either side should be done.

Romanticizing war, painting over the reason of why most wars are fought, legitimizing large numbers of deaths... it all makes people feel better, but at the end of the day you've still got people dead for no fault of their own, and many more mentally and physically injured. Some of those injuries never heal. If drones reduce those numbers, use the drones.

I'm not going to say this is bfine's reasoning, but this is mine. By removing your side from the battlefield you are devaluing the life of the enemy. I get if you think it is romanticizing warfare, because it is in a sense. But I still believe in honor and I believe in the value of all human life, not just those that I agree with.

Edit to add: I heard Dave Grossman talk one time, probably 15 or 16 years ago. He wrote a book called On Killing that I have also read. He talked about the efforts of the military to dehumanize their enemy combatants. What they do to try to train the brain of a soldier to kill, because that is not an instinct everyone has in today's world. He talked about the psychological effects it has on the soldiers.

When I think of weaponized drones I think of it as one of the final steps in dehumanizing the enemy. In removing our soldiers from the battlefield, how do we humanize them? I get that to some that will seem a good thing, and I get that some will see it as good for other reasons, but I do not like that we do this. I don't like that we dehumanize the enemy. I know that if you don't it takes a psychological toll on a person, but I don't think that's a bad thing, because I don't want killing to be easy.

But that's my pacifist upbringing. I should note that I heard Grossman at an event held by my church at the UN. So there is context there for where my beliefs lie. I've said before, that bit of me runs pretty deep.

Edit again: 16 years ago this April. It was the spring before 9/11. Just happened to remember the image of the WTC on the skyline.