What one Predator drone pilot described of his experience fighting in the Iraq war while never leaving Nevada: 'You're going to war for 12 hours, shooting weapons at targets, directing kills on enemy combatants. Then you get in the car and you drive home, and within 20 minutes you're sitting at the dinner table talking to your kids about their homework.'
Interpretation
The quote illustrates the disconnect between modern warfare and personal life.
This quote highlights the surreal experience of drone warfare, where pilots can engage in combat from thousands of miles away yet return to their everyday lives almost immediately. It underscores the emotional and psychological challenges faced by those who operate in such detached conditions, balancing the gravity of their actions with the mundane realities of family life.
In practice
In a discussion about modern warfare technologies in a seminar.
In a guerrilla war, the line between legitimate and illegitimate killing is blurred. The policies of free-fire zones, in which a soldier is permitted to shoot at any human target, armed or unarmed, further confuse the fighting man's moral senses.
In listening to the narratives of the Congolese, I came to terms with the extent to which their bodies had become battlefields.
This war differs from other wars, in this particular. We are not fighting armies but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war.
Like a baseball game, wars are not over till they are over. Wars don't run on a clock like football. No previous generation was so hopelessly unrealistic that this had to be explained to them.
We come across thirty or so hurried graves with makeshift wooden markers. 'Private Edwards, E.', a number, and that was all. Fourteen days ago he was alive, thinking feeling, hoping... If war was a game of cards, I'd say someone was cheating.
War is a series of catastrophes which result in victory.
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