Dehumanization of the Military
Rob Mintzes
July 09, 2008 My grandfather fought in the Pacific. He was a SeaBee. One night, while on a patrol in the jungle of Guam, he heard a rustling in the bushes next to him. Reacting defensively, he emptied the magazine of his rifle into the bush and ran off. The next day, another patrol came back and reported that they had found a dead Japanese soldier in the bushes around where my grandfather had been, riddled with bullet holes. Upon hearing this, my grandfather did what most of us would likely do...he vomited.
My grandfather told my dad that when you're in a large battle (such as when U.S. troops landed at Guam), with thousands of soldiers fighting and firing at one another, it's difficult to tell who hit who and who killed who. However, when you kill someone up close, and you know that you're the one responsible for taking a life, you are much more deeply affected.
I have always been a supporter of our military and of the need for a military that is both well-trained and technologically advanced. However, today I find myself faced with a dilemma regarding the "humanism" of war, or rather the increasing lack thereof.
This morning, before going off to work, I was watching CNN and a story came on about the pilots of the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that are currently being used in Iraq and Afghanistan. Links to the text and video stories can be found here:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/07/09/remote.fighters/index.html?iref=newssearch
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2008/07/09/mcintyre.remote.killer.cnn?iref=videosearch
The stories feature the newest UAV in the Air Force's arsenal: the Reaper. Unlike its predecessor -- the Predator -- the Reaper can carry the same bomb load as an F-16 fighter jet, all without a pilot physically being in the cockpit (and with far less maintenance required than with the F-16). From Creech Air Force Base, northwest of Las Vegas, Nevada, the pilots control the planes some 7,500 miles from where the fight is.
You've got to admit that this kind of technology is pretty incredible, but I'm worried about something else: the dehumanization of the military and of war itself. Here is where I face my dilemma. I believe that we need to keep our soldiers, pilots, and other military personnel as safe as possible, and I know that doing so means replacing them with machines and other instruments that do the dirty work for us. But that's not the kind of dehumanization I'm talking about. Here's what I mean. In an interview, one of the Reaper pilots said, "Seeing bad guys on the screen and watching them possibly get dispatched, and then going down to the Taco Bell for lunch, it's kind of surreal." They're there, but he's not. I'm talking about dehumanization in terms of being totally emotionally disconnected from war.
Basically, all the pilots have to do is pull a trigger while sitting in an armchair (they're called armchair pilots), and someone dies 7,500 miles away. Granted, the gravity of it may not the same as pushing a red button and launching a storm of nukes at Russia, but the concept is similar. Looking through a grainy infrared camera, you might only see what resembles a human form, if you see a person at all. You don't see their face, don't hear their voice, don't know their name...and as CNN said, "military commanders see remotely piloted aircraft as the model for the way future wars will be fought."
That's the part that scares me: the idea of us fighting future wars from armchairs. War is a terrible thing, but I would think that seeing it on a screen from an armchair creates a highly diminished sense of just how horrible it is. The thought of seeing bombing raids against Baghdad or Teheran conducted solely from within air-conditioned bases in the States leaves an awful taste in my mouth. The pilots aren't physically looking out of a cockpit window to see the impact of their actions. They're not the soldiers on the ground who get to see charred, twisted rubble and bodies blown apart. They don't get to see the true horrors of war. War should never be something that's considered acceptable, and it's something to which we should never be desensitized. Theoretically, with the Reapers, pilots can take off, go grab lunch while the plane's on autopilot, fire a few missiles at their targets and see some onscreen explosions, land the bird back at a base in Afghanistan or Iraq, and then drive home to bed without ever having to leave Nevada.
It feels like war as a 9-to-5 video game job. When I play a video game like "Halo," I don't care about the characters I'm killing, because even though I'm seeing them on a screen, I know they're not real. Those who are killed by the Reapers are real, and whether they're America-hating terrorists or innocent civilians caught in the crossfire, they're real people all the same. It's an unfeeling way to conduct a war, and it's the wrong way. I'm afraid that it could only lead to generations of pilots and soldiers who feel nothing for the lives they have taken, because they never physically see those people face-to-face...of people who don't fully understand the consequences of their actions because they basically fight via television set.
One of things that makes us most human is our ability to feel remorse for the things we've done, to -- like my grandfather did -- vomit at the thought that we are capable of taking the life of another person. Do I want our soldiers and pilots to be the best? Absolutely, but not at the cost of losing their humanity and becoming unfeeling killing machines. I want them to be able to comprehend the weight of their actions and understand their significance. A military of soldiers without feeling is a military I'm afraid of, and one that I have trouble throwing my full support behind.
After seeing the so much death at the Battle of Fredericksburg in 1862, Robert E. Lee said, "It is well that war is so terrible...otherwise we would grow too fond of it."
Those words ring truer now more than ever, and I think Lee sums up my fears very nicely. I don't want to see more future wars, but these UAVs look like they could be the Pentagon's surefire solution to ensuring that we can engage in an increasing number of conflicts without feeling the human pinch (and who knows how many we'll kill on the opposite end).
Tags: Reaper , UAV , War , Afghanistan , Iraq
