Those about whom we make life-and-death decisions, as they scurry below or carry on as best they can, have -- like any beings faced with the gods -- no recourse or appeal. Seen on screens, they are, to us, distant, grainy figures, hardly larger than ants.

It's not the visuals that I find chilling about those horrible videos of attacks in Afghanistan, it's the haunting audio tracks.... "There's one! BOOM! Got 'im. There's another! There he is. There he is. BOOM! Hurrah! etc." It reveals such a callously willing "suspension of disbelief", with the excuse of "war" to allow a video game where winning points are awarded to the high scorer's "kills".

Of course, the factor ignored in this perverse and faceless expression of manifest destiny is that eventually the technology will make its way down the food chain to be used by others against the originators. There is absolutely no reason to assume that this new "wartainment" will be used more ethically in retaliation, or that such use will stay contained within impoverished countries located far away, or that the game will be any less "fun" for those that use it against us.

If you ask me, the huge elephant(s) in the room - when considering justification for US weapons development during the past 50 years - are the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The military "success" of those most horrific crimes against humanity have utterly skewed any concept of responsibility for the fellowship of mankind and replaced it with a guilt-based, fear-based need to relentlessly try to prove that "might makes right".

Rationalized annihilation. As posted on break.com, home of funny videos :-/

Apache Helicopter Kills in Iraq - Watch more Funny Videos

My 2 cents is that eventually the Russians and Chinese will lead develop a modular anti-air system that actually works on drones and the rest. That would probably flip this balance.
--
Hongpong.com

this argument: But if one looks at the numbers, recent technology has had a remarkable impact on reducing deaths for both sides of the equation.

Here are the numbers: total US/Coalition Fatalities, 4356. Total Iraqi Dead: between 93,000 and 100,000. Sure, technology has reduced war dead for America (and quite possibly Israel) but it has not reduced the fatalities on the receiving end. Not remotely.

Or perhaps we have two different sets of numbers?

As for this argument: The other point I would like to make is the inexorable decline of state to state warfare, currently at the lowest levels in 100's of years, and probably in human history. The technology is simply rendering warfare too efficient.

Sure, state to state warfare has declined. But I'm of the opinion that the enormous rise in state directed warfare against it's citizen and vice-versa is simply a reversion to the historical mean. Most often in human history violence has been internal, as opposed to external.

^{"All men's gains are the fruit of venturing."}

-Herodotus

Thinking of world war II what the casualties were. They were in the 10's of millions. World War I had catastrophic death, as did the Civil War. The inability to target is my basis of comparison. Comparatively speaking the casualties in Iraq are nowhere near historic levels. Yugoslavia is a great example in that there were NO casualties on the US side during the conflict and very few on the Yugoslav side. That is the direct result of the technology and targeting.

Even the Vietnam War American deaths were ten times greater than in Iraq, and in Vietnam were twenty to thirty times greater. Still a period of poor targeting.

The other thing to remember is that many many of the casualties in Iraq were based on internecine fighting and not the direct result of American targeting (though we destabilized the region).

To your other point that is simply not true. Death by violence in all its forms related to warfare, state to state or civil war, has been falling relatively steady since about 1200 to the extent data could be analyzed.

In 1200 the chance of a man dying violently in warfare was 1 in 20. Today, if I remember correctly, worldwide it is something on the order of 1 in 120,000. It has fallen particularly sharply after world war II. In fact since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990 violence in all its forms has declined precipitously. Even criminal violence is down. In the United States Violent crime is down 40% from 1990, in Europe it is down 10% (they were less violent to begin with). In terms of the steady decline no one is fully sure what the reason for the most recent outbreak of falling violence, except that it coincides with the cold war and pairs also with the precipitous decline in terrorism.

Terrorism has fallen steadily since it peaked in the early 1970's.

These are contrary to the news. But if one follows the news one would think the most dangerous thing in the world is shark attacks. News has no ability to provide context. The fact remains, and the studies bear it out that violence has been in an inexorable long term decline that has been accelerating. Peace is breaking out all over the world.

...by an order of magnitude or more, in many cases [think about the number of KIAs associated with destroying in detail the military forces of a second tier state of 25 million during most of the 20th century - they would have been enormous]. There are some exceptions when the populace has been the operational focus [*cough* Yugo *cough*], but in the main the toll per "unit of conflict" when adjusting for population size is currently much, much lower than it has been - at least among western dominated conflict. (In large part this is because the numbers of combatants is much lower, because the assymetry is so pronounced and because the tempo is so high - though conflicts do tend to have long, relatively expensive, tails.) Non-western dominated conflict, now that's another story - but not one that's currently under contention.

IMHO, what has changed very significantly (in western-dominated conflict) is that even though the absolute numbers of casualties are lower for a given unit of conflict, the ratio of civilian to military casualties has shifted dramatically. Additionally, the costs to enter the battlefield at meaningful level are extremely low, meaning that the conflicts not infrequently have a long tail. Add to all that the reality that toleration for both of those things (casualties and unfashionably long wars) is at an all time low [unless the populace is really "het up", of course].

“The absence of any US-Iran bilateral channel...may have the perverse effect of reinforcing Iranian interest in progressing in the nuclear realm so that the US will be forced to take it seriously and engage it directly." ~ Richard Haass

Wait til the other guy has the same capability.

I did inhale.

...warfare over the past 50 years has been the significant decrease in the number of combatants involved. Divisions cover many, many times more frontage than they used to - what has changed is that when there are force on force conflicts between peers [and I'm speaking specifically of western type conventional forces - the sort of Desert Storm type of thing] one side obliterates the other in detail in extremely short order.

What's going to change isn't that the other guy's going to have the same capability - to be effective, he'll have different capabilities that will significantly enhance his lethality at the expense of unit survivability and mobility. Think Hez and their leveraging of ATGMs.

“The absence of any US-Iran bilateral channel...may have the perverse effect of reinforcing Iranian interest in progressing in the nuclear realm so that the US will be forced to take it seriously and engage it directly." ~ Richard Haass

is used to greater effect as well. Hezbollah is a great example. They are being gradually drawn in as a political party, and as that happens the lethality diminishes. Nothing loses your cache like suddenly being responsible for the construction of public schools or roadways.

The temptation of the carrot has also become so very very real. And the US has an amazing ability to dispense carrots along with an amazingly fierce stick.

You bring up a point of how small the lethal devices can become.

When was the West last actually involved with a "force on force conflict between peers." If you as me today's prerequisite for modern western military adventures is to only attack countries devoid of navies, air forces or armies and ncapable of launching long range aerial, naval or land assaults. (It also helps if they're first hobbled with sanctions, located far far away, dusky skinned, underpopulated, illiterate and dirt poor.) While Iraq didn't fill the latter two of those requirements, who could suggest that Saddam Hussein's cardboard cutout aircraft and fancy dress guard detail ever constituted any serious force-on-force threat to US military might.

So far, these designated enemies have been able to wreck significant trouble with the equivalent of the time honoured sand in the gas tank rebel routines. But massive remote controlled assaults from attackers that are all but invisible easily promise to be an overwhelming challenge to any resistance.

Does this matter? After all, at the end of the day, the purpose for instigating war is to conquer another state's population and steal their stuff. For those who enjoy this sort of thing, it's certainly efficient in terms of the attacker's time, money and effort to simply obliterate the other population in one swell foop.

If venting, what you've written above serves quite nicely. If you want to understand, you'll need to dig a great deal deeper. For instance, the notion that our nation in particular engages in warfare for the purposes of conquering another state's population and stealing their stuff leaves a lot to be desired in terms of explanatory power [as does "Canadians just mean well"]. I'm certainly willing to pursue the discussion, but I'm a good deal less willing to wade through out of sheer cussedness than I have been.

“The absence of any US-Iran bilateral channel...may have the perverse effect of reinforcing Iranian interest in progressing in the nuclear realm so that the US will be forced to take it seriously and engage it directly." ~ Richard Haass

The thing about modern warfare, Dave, is that it is deadly accurate. Fewer forces, yes, more killed faster yes. Somebody replaces those RPG 7 with RPG 32, give them man-pads, automatic grenade launchers, and standoff AT missiles like some of those the IDF recently faced in Labanon and there will be a hundred NATO deaths a day in Afghanistan easy and those are still small arms.

We need a NATION WIDE STRIKE for Real healthcare reform

As to templating Hez onto Afghanistan, me, I rather doubt it - certainly not any time soon. Hez is an historically extremely particular phenomenon.

“The absence of any US-Iran bilateral channel...may have the perverse effect of reinforcing Iranian interest in progressing in the nuclear realm so that the US will be forced to take it seriously and engage it directly." ~ Richard Haass

but if the US came up against insurgents backed by either Russia or China then we would see these kinds of weapons.

We need a NATION WIDE STRIKE for Real healthcare reform

It's the combination of the right men/women with the weapons. This is a strategy that requires a very significant investment of labour, knowledge and care preparing the battlefield and significant commitment to the cause. Just handing ATGMs to folks doesn't have the same effect - no matter how they feel about their cause, they need to back it up with years worth of hard preparation.

“The absence of any US-Iran bilateral channel...may have the perverse effect of reinforcing Iranian interest in progressing in the nuclear realm so that the US will be forced to take it seriously and engage it directly." ~ Richard Haass

A better RPG, and they could be retrained in a few weeks, for example, would make the use of bomb resistant vehicles impractical; fatal; therefore casualties would go up. The US trained the Afghans with Man-pads and look what happened to the Russians. The US also gave them customized portable missile launchers capable of indirect fire. I don't think the Taliban needs to be like Hezbollah to significantly change the cost of this war.

We need a NATION WIDE STRIKE for Real healthcare reform

The US (and to a lesser extent the UK) provided them with MANPAD systems (IIRC Blowpipe, Redeye and Stinger - don't believe any Javelins were fielded). The Pakistanis selected the Afghan personnel and provided the training - and they did a very fine job of it. I'm not aware of any MANPADs of the day fielded that were capable of indirect fire - Stinger was fire and forget but required a direct LOS for launch (might be able to spoof it momentarily but I suspect that there's a launch commit circuit), Redeye sucked just on general principles and Blowpipe had to be manually steered to impact.

There's no doubt that this sort of thing would have an effect - the question is whether it would lead to a Hezbollah-like strategy and I just can't see that. Adding better systems without the accompanying fundamental shifts in the ethos just makes a higher class of road kill - Hezbollah fundamentally changed the nature of the engagement at a strategic level by leveraging these systems in playing to their unique and long established strengths. That's quite a different kettle of fish.

“The absence of any US-Iran bilateral channel...may have the perverse effect of reinforcing Iranian interest in progressing in the nuclear realm so that the US will be forced to take it seriously and engage it directly." ~ Richard Haass

and the indirect was provided by mule portable rocket launchers; yes, we actually provided the mules.

We need a NATION WIDE STRIKE for Real healthcare reform

Surely conquering another state's population and stealing their stuff is a time honoured motivation for armed conflict.

...by us.

“The absence of any US-Iran bilateral channel...may have the perverse effect of reinforcing Iranian interest in progressing in the nuclear realm so that the US will be forced to take it seriously and engage it directly." ~ Richard Haass

could find an instance where that is the motive of the US. In fact after WWII it was the US that came in and rebuilt the wartorn areas in many instances uncompensated. It was precisely the strategy engaged in with Iraq at the beginning. A total lack of understanding to believe the US engages in conflict to take real estate. Just isn't so, there are much bigger fish to fry.