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Comment by opinali | Hacker News Reader

Drones, Napalm, B-52 bombing—all weapons for cowards. The problem with remote-control war is that there's no political cost; remember that the Vietnam war didn't end because the great public bought into the hippies' peace&love ideology, it ended because the great public was receiving too many of their sons back in body bags.

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“The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other guy die for his.” Patton

All weapons are the weapons of cowards. It isn't fair that almost all the weapons we use in Afghanistan are superior to our enemies, and it isn't fair that they resort with IEDs and suicide bombs.

If you have equal weapons then you look for superiority in numbers or tactics. Long gone are the days when "honourable" war meant agreeing to fight pitched battles on terrain that suited neither side and both sides knew was coming. Those "honourable" wars were also the most brutal to both prisoners and civilians.

A related point is that we used to have conscription and it was much harder to get elected if you didn't have a good record of service. This meant that leaders thought much harder about going to war and there was a genuine political cost in that the masses had a better grasp on the implications.

I bet people used to call rifles "weapons for cowards". And before that, muskets. And cannons. Before that, I'm sure people thought bows and arrows were "for cowards". Or spears. Or just plain pointy sticks.

The ideal of "Batman" and most other superheroes encapsulate this idea exactly.

They probably did up until the point when both sides were armed with them. But the difference with Napalms, B52s and drone strikes is the enemy they were used against were never likely to be able to obtain similar weapons and thus threaten their opponents to a similar extent.

I'm not particularly sure about the concept of "cowardice" here, I just had to point out this logical flaw.

On what timescale does "never" apply? Large technological gaps in weapons between different people carrying out a fight aren't that uncommon, after all. A couple hundred years later and you can hardly tell the difference.

> On what timescale does "never" apply?

Non-temporal colloquial "never". "Never in their wildest dreams" never.

It seems reasonably possible that the people we're currently blowing up with drones would have similar technology by, say, the year 3000. (Not the exact same people, obviously, but that group of people.)

> The problem with remote-control war is that there's no political cost

Oversimplification. Domestically, the US is still paying the cost of using, eg, Agent Orange in Asia, today (children of service members born deformed).

Really? I haven't received my bill for agent orange in forever. Anyone sent to prison for authorising its use? Civil lawsuits? No, there was no cost (except to those directly affected) for using agent orange.

You haven't received a bill? Fascinating — do you not pay taxes? Because if you are, then you most certainly have been paying for medical treatments for veterans and their families, as well as various US government cleanup projects.

Civil lawsuit: http://www.benefits.va.gov/compensation/claims-postservice-a...

Sorry, can't find that bill. I pay taxes and I regard any class action funding from the DoD with the same skepticism as the Iraq War. No one is paying for it, not in dollars. We've spent many trillions in Iraq and the government just charges it to the fed who kicks the can down the road.

I'm sure I might pay for it one day. I'm fairly sure my kids and grandchildren will pay for it.

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