SENTINEL WATCH September 23, 2002 Issue

This is war

By Nate Talbot

Don't get me wrong. I'm not really a militaristic kind of guy. At least not in the conventional sense. But I believe there's a type of war that can serve a useful purpose.

Anyone who has read even a little history can tell you that from Day One warfare has been awful. What people do to each other because of perceived or even real injustices and wrongs can be horrible.

People say that battles today don't necessarily need to be like the bloody confrontations of the past. In modern warfare "surgical strikes" can be so precise that they offer the possibility of taking out a target while virtually avoiding casualties. And with robots now being developed that can enter and search caves, maybe someday wars will be fought by machine troops, while people sit safely behind control panels pushing buttons—sort of like Nintendo. Still, none of this would be truly useful or constructive war.