Killing via joystick
My dad works for the U.S. Airforce and recently sent me some info on the latest killing machine that our country has built. He usually has short pithy comments about life (mostly cynical or pessimistic), but in his most recent comment about the killing machine, pictured above, which is aptly called, “Reaper”, he made a valid point that I think is very insightful—yet very troubling.
He said…
Check out the latest plane that kills via joystick. When the horror and blood of war is no longer seen by the guy doing the killing, there’s probably more war in store. Compare to WWII when the Japanese tried to send bombs to the US on balloons, birds, etc. This thing is bigger than the WWII fighter aircraft and out performs all of them, without a pilot.
Again: “When the horror and blood of war is no longer seen by the guy doing the killing, there’s probably more war in store.”
Remember that…
Church Dogmatics I.1: The Doctrine of the Word of God, by Karl Barth
Jonathan Edwards: A Life, by George Marsden
America's Theologian: A Recommendation of Jonathan Edwards, by Robert Jenson
Beyond Liberalism and Fundamentalism: How Modern & Postmodern Philosophy Set the Theological Agenda
The Trinity, by Karl Rahner
The Orthodox Way, by Kallistos Ware
Jack: A Life of C. S. Lewis, by George Sayer
J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography, by Humphrey Carpenter
Discipleship, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Yes if you can’t see the horror and the blood, you don’t have much reason to stop, short of genocide or more likely bankruptcy. Looks like we have it all cleaned up and taken care of. What’s next? Computers calculating what we would have lost during a simulated attack and then we all step into the disintegrator like a bad Star Trek episode?
wow… a sad commentary on what drives our society.
Ya, Geoff. This was pretty dang sad. It’s rather interesting that the government, that blessed beacon of American manifestdestiny, can resort to spending literally billions of dollars on joystick killers while at the same time people are going bankrupt because they have to have their tonsils removed. I don’t want to treat the military as a whipping boy, but man, do we really need to be creating billion dollar drones? Why not spend that money for other purposes? I don’t claim to have all the answers or know the complexity of the situation, but I guess saying it’s sad is good enough to point out the absurdity.