It’s easy to understand why presidents, politicians and the military love robots. They don’t talk back. They follow orders. You press a button and they do what they are told. They are considered so efficient, and so lethal.
These modern killing machines represent science fiction reborn as science “faction.” Robots and drones don’t burn Korans or pose with the heads of their captives on the battlefield. (Robots also don’t protest wars.) Lose the human factor and you get silent but deadly total destruction.
And that’s why drone warfare has become such a weapon of choice. You have video game jockeys sitting on their asses in front of consoles of digital displays at an Air Force base outside Las Vegas, targeting suspected terrorists in Afghanistan. After a couple of quick kills, they take the rest of the day off.
It’s only later, that we get the reports of civilians decimated as collateral damage.
Oops! These…
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Already the projections are in—not for who is going to win the election in 2012—but for how much it is likely to cost.