OmnipotentEntity wrote:
Moral Weapon is an oxymoron.
First, let's be accurate here. A bomb isn't a weapon, it's a munition. The bomb bay in the bomber is the weapon because it has the triggering and targeting mechanisms.
Second, an oxymoron suggests a contradiction.
The military never uses one person with one weapon. You have a theater and rules of engagement that are dictated, in everything but a military dictatorship, by civilian rule.
A main battle tank, for example, is designed for one primary purpose: to defeat other tanks. It's not moral or immoral, it's a machine. In practice, a tank commander, a gunner, a loader and a driver are operating that vehicle. And they are going to work with at least a wingman, more typically a platoon. And they'll be supported by scouts, infantry, air support and indirect (artillery). And they'll be coordinated by a chain of command.
It gets shitty when there are civilians on the battlefield. But the reality is that we don't get to pick where we want to have a war. At best,
if both sides agree and are faithful to the agreement we can limit the destructiveness through the rules of engagement.
Back to TFA, I think Cohen's problem is similar to the author's problem. He thought that there was a techinological solution to war. The author thinks that adopting the right policies will solve war, or, perhaps, that sinister "neocons" are pushing policies that create wars in their zeal to build an empire. Why do they want to build an empire? Because, Pinky, that's what they do every night!
The reality is that you can't be prowar or antiwar. If it's going to happen, it's just a matter of when. Hussein wanted power over the entire Middle East and Bush and the neocons decided that it would be wiser to engage him when they did rather than wait ten years. They might have been wrong, and we might have been wrong when we used Iraq as a proxy against the USSR, but there's no conspiracy that simply created this situation out of thin air.
And no amount of enlightened policy or clever technology can make it go away either.