fly a deadly beast like an AH-64 or spend a day on a MOUT site drilling live fire entries with an M4 or cream an old tank hull with a 25mm cannon from a Bradley?
Maybe I should be more worried about them getting hurt. I dunno.
I believe in the Warrior Class. This goes for Military, Cops, Fire and Medics. That structured mentality and dedication to thoughtless action can make the difference in preserving/saving many lives. I acknowledge its value in getting the job done.
Of course, there's always the big "Why?" and who is it that sends our children to war? Those whose lives will not be endangered.
And what you describe as war, today, is more like a video game. The stuff you want your kids to do is
distance warfare, not Grunt.
Grunts are cannon fodder AFTER the toys are used. Perhaps you could pull some strings and get them behind the lines and behind a button, but, once they are in the system, it's a crapshoot where they end up and how much danger they are in. Put them in a uniform and they become targets. That part of life is simple.
Most of the wars on the planet today are all about resources and who controls them. There are no more moral fights because underneath it all, philosophical and religious differences are co-opted to satisfy the hunger of a few up at the top. Wars are never about even distribution of resources, they are about greed to profit from meeting the needs of the populace that SERVES the interests of the people in charge.
I hope you can see I'm not pointing fingers. Just relaying what I've observed over the last 50 years about recent humanity and its relationship to war.
The problem with toys today is not so much
collateral damage, which is what we claim are "the terrible consequences of war". The truth is, such things as killing children is an acceptable "cost of doing business." The buttons pushed take out innocents, and studies are even showing the button pushers, though out of danger, carry huge psychological scars.
Wishing your kids the camaraderie of war wishes upon them exposure to much more than physical danger. It is asking them to, thirty years from now, look at what damage has come through them and to whom. These are things they'll have to look at long after you're dead.
The walking wounded flooding our streets and ambulances from what appears to be a pretty "easy" conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan -- figure 100 of them (at least!) for one of us -- is just beginning.
I would hope that a lot more people with war experience like yourself would want their children to invest their lives in building cooperation so war becomes outmoded. Believe me, it would take about the same amount of energy.
I don't have a position about war and warriors. I have a position about greed and its aftermath. Here it is:
http://www.firetender.org/Music.html
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