The "hardwareification" is also troubling. When there is no human cost for one side to wage war, it becomes a lot more politically palatable because you no longer have family members coming home in boxes.

It's easy to say "Well, the other side are bad dudes who have it coming", but even if they are genuinely bad dudes (and not just politically inconvenient) there's no war without collateral damage (a term invented by the US during Vietnam, when they were doing a lot of it).