Airport insanity

[John Young]

James,

I appreciate your valiant if futile effort to defend honorable
militarism, but you appear not to understand that much of 
current US military doctrine is aimed at terrorizing enemy 
forces, en masse, into submission, not merely courageously 
killing each combatant, mano a mano.

Carpet bombing, bunker-busting, cruise missles, stealth
attacks, artillery barrages, and tactical and strategic attacks
with overwhelming forces in multiples of the opposing force, 
the so-called "shock and awe," are intended to demoralize 
and terrify the opposition including civilian supporters. These
attacks require little or no courage to execute, for most are
accomplished with stand-off or remote-controlled platforms,
guided by long-radar, GPS, and satellites, systems operated
by clean-uniformed technicians who don't bear personal
arms, even take showers daily and watch TV of their
carnage for entertainment.

This contrasts with the special forces which do aim at
small scale, precision killing, and which does require courage.
Not much of that goes on, way too cheap for the military-
industrial empire which treasures big iron, gigantic iron,
humongous iron, unbelievably expensive metal, costing
millions of dollars per kill, rather imaginary deaths in the
Cold War manner.

Don't mistake the language and literature of war for
the real thing. You find yourself 100 yards from a bomb
blast, and your organs go into shutdown from the
concussion, yours vision blurs, your limbs won't
function, you shit and piss your britches, then another
bomb falls 50 yards away and blood squirts from ears
eyes and gums due to air compression of your veins
and arties, you flop senselessly out of control and
try to cry for momma, no air in your lungs, skin turning
red from heat, then a third bomb hits 25 yards away
and your body begins to come apart from the blast
or being scythed by shrapnel -- if your head doesn't
leave the carcass, it'll be fried by the metal helmet,
your skin will sizzle, boiling blood will spray out
of all your orifices, but you'll not get to appreciate this
sacrifice for your country, you'll be chatting with
your maker, the bodybag team scraping you memorial
into the barbage bag, heading for the flag-draped
tube.

Back in the control room which directed the friendly
fire, the boys and girls are whooping at the bomb
pattern, high-fiving and fist knocking at the perfect
fit of thinking machine and killing machine, no risk 
to the comfy killers manning the mouses, just like 
the gameboys taught.