[Ramius]

Way cooler than Tron...

But not as cool as what we got cookin' now.

We're getting so good at warfighting now that I actually worry that we're getting *too* good at it. Look at the Iraq war as an example. Here we took out a whole country on a scale that hasn't been done in decades, and we did it in record time with casualties on *both* sides that were negligible by anyone's expectation of war. In the entire history of warfare, from the Greeks to the Romans to the modern ages, there has never been a campaign that was so successful so quickly. Not even the German "lightning war" was as overmatched in it's march through Poland.

I don't mean to minimize our losses in any way. Every loss of a soldier is an incalculable loss to a family somewhere. I can't even begin to ponder that. Compared to the losses in prior wars, however, this one was a mere fraction of anything ever, anywhere.

But there is a risk in making war too antiseptic. Then it becomes too easy to decide to do. In a sense, war should always remain ugly and hideous. That's what makes it something to be avoided. It takes someone of exceptional character to have this sort of power at his disposal and yet still not wield it unless there is no other option.

I can think of no better reason to NEVER elect another democrat to office than this.

[Wneighbor]

Much wisdom in all that you say there. All of it.

[Sam Cree]

" Every loss of a soldier is an incalculable loss to a family somewhere"

"Every time one person dies, a little bit of something dies in all of us." I'm screwing up a quotation from someone.

Yeah, I agree, there's not a Democrat of stature with the integrity to be president.

[Fedora]

Yeah, it's cool and scary at the same time. On the scary side, besides the antiseptic thing, my concern is also what will happen with the UN and EU's attempt to offset US military strength by building an EU army, etc. For that reason I think it's vital that we stay well ahead in the arms race, esp. in stuff like space weapons, robotics, and nanotechnology. We didn't even use most of what we've got in that area and we still blitzed Iraq faster than France could say "I surrender"; my mind reels to think of what it would look like if we really flexed our muscles. I suspect the last few Star Wars movies are not far off the mark of where the future of warfare is going.

[300winmag]

We're getting so good at warfighting now that I actually worry that we're getting *too* good at it.

I don't. Somebody someday would have made the great breakthrough. I'm glad it was us.

War will always be horrible for us, because we care for our troops that defend us. And we will always have grunts down in the mud.

But those grunts will not only be able to kill the enemy, they will spread despair among those enemy we haven't yet engaged. We did that in a small scale in Iraq, which represents almost a quantum leap, despite the klinton years, in military capability. And it's accelerating.

The Poles, the Germans, and the Japanese all fought bravely to the bitter end. That's because they all knew that at least they could hurt their attackers, even if they would be destroyed. But if they can't even smudge our paintjobs, all hope is gone. As someone said of this war, it was the biggest mismatch since Godzilla vs Bambi. Personally, I thought it looked more like Robocop walking through the drug lab, from the movie, Robocop.The depersonalization of war is good for us, bad for our enemies. It's a way of denigrating their status as a worthy opponent, and mocking any self-image they may have of themselves as warriors, or even men. Why inconvenience our troops when we can send assemblies of computers, explosives, and bandwidth to hunt them down without feeling or hate? We're saying that as an opponent, they are worth only as much as a cheap weapon. If I can shame and insult an enemy into giving up, so much the better.

From what I can tell, the fighting in the first few days was pretty intense. Iraq did everything it could to make the entire country into an Iwo Jima, other than throwing in aircraft and armor, which they didn't have much of. After the first few days, the word got back that not only weren't they hurting the Americans, but their troops were blown away almost without effort. As somebody else said, it was the biggest mistmatch since the British Army vs the Martians in HG Well's War of the Worlds. Sometimes this brings its own problems. For one thing, we left a lot of enemy troops, now in civilian clothes, thinking that we were weak in not killing everyone in sight. They come from a brutal country, and cannot comprehend any form of mercy. So they hope that by killing us in ones and twos, they can achieve some form of victory, since they could not kill us by the thousands.

Iraq was remarkably untouched by our campaign, Saddam did more damage in peacetime than we did in the war. If Baghdad wound up looking like Berlin after the Red Army got through with it, and there were a million Iraqi civilian casualties, I guarantee they wouldn't have any inclination to give us a hard time, or sit on the fence to see how things shake out.

Sorry, sort of drifted away from your initial statement. I think the more antiseptic and long-range we make war, the more it demeans the enemy's fighting spirit, and sows despair. That means we have to kill fewer of them, and have fewer things to fix when we win, along with saving more of our own troops' lives.

[SuziQ]

I can think of no better reason to NEVER elect another democrat to office than this.

AMEN, brother!