CSotD: Your war is very important to us …
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As I was just saying, humor has become an essential part of political cartooning, at least if you want your cartoons to appear in the papers. I suspect that Jeff Koterba has a pretty good chance with this one.
Those who can't fathom the politics will still get a kick out of the gag.
He had an interesting challenge in setting this up, because the combination of (A) defense cuts, (B) shipment of jobs overseas and (C) remoteness of the drone program was a lot to get into two panels.
While granted no customer service rep is going to flat-out announce that he's in Mumbai, I think he did an excellent job.The point is made without the clumsy crutch of putting a sign on the wall staying "US Drone Program Center, Mumbai."
Signs on the wall are just labels without their little arrows, and the mundane greeting provides a contrast between the bland familiarity of customer service and the horror of remote control bombing.
Speaking of that latter issue:
I'm not as horrified by the drone program as some, in that I don't see it as a major break with past practice. There have been errors in drone targeting, but there were plenty of errors in Vietnam when we were dropping bombs from B-52s.
Not that errors should be excused as the inevitable consequence of war, though, of course, they are that. And I'm not qualified to tell the difference between the results of an errant drone and an errant bomb load, though I certainly suspect the potential collateral damage in the latter is greater.
But I would deny that the remoteness of drones is a change, when you consider the remoteness of taking off from a base outside the theater of operations and dropping your payload from high above the clouds, of which Phil Ochs wrote, "The pilot's playing poker in the cockpit of the plane; casualties are mounting like the falling of the rain … "
It was called a push-button war then, and the bar has not moved a great deal with the advent of the drone; B-52 combat losses in Vietnam totaled 17, about one percent of USAF combat losses in the war. Another 14 were lost to operational failures, which (A) probably made no difference to the crews involved, (B) could have been the same flying airliners but (C) is a risk not faced by drone pilots.
Still, I don't see it as a huge leap in detaching the warrior from the results of war.
It was argued then that putting a man on the ground where he had to face, and see, the man he killed made the reality and morality more plain. I've never been in combat and I'm not going to sit here pontificating on what other people experience.
But whatever the difference for the individual warrior, I do worry that, the more remote the combat, the more willing we may become to order it. Drones are expensive, but so is troop deployment, while the cost of explaining flag-draped coffins should at least cause commanders-in-chief to pause before engaging in warfare.
Not that it's ever been a complete hindrance, of course.
And here I'll quote Siegfried Sassoon — decorated for gallantry in combat by his country and known as "Mad Jack" by the men he led in those operations — a veteran of World War I, when the war was, indeed, up close and personal, at least for the frontline soldier:
If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath,
I’d live with scarlet Majors at the Base,
And speed glum heroes up the line to death.
You’d see me with my puffy petulant face,
Guzzling and gulping in the best hotel,
Reading the Roll of Honour. ‘Poor young chap,’
I’d say —‘I used to know his father well;
Yes, we’ve lost heavily in this last scrap.’
And when the war is done and youth stone dead,
I’d toddle safely home and die — in bed.
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