Doves and Predators

Don't get me wrong; I have high tolerance for ambiguity. Ratchet and Clank, for example, has to be one of the most enjoyable video games ever. But this sort of article makes me feel queasy: In the sights of a joystick killing machine. Ratchet and Clank are imaginary. It's make-believe. It's over the top. But quotes like this:

As I stood talking into a camera on a remote airstrip in Kandahar, a Predator drone circled the sky, putting me into its sights with its high-precision cameras -- and just a trigger away from being turned into the charred remains of a Hellfire missile.

and this:

I was told that one of the Predators in front of me recently fired a Hellfire missile at a group of Taliban insurgents, killing 12 of them. It was launched by a young woman who is 23.

are glorifying the killing of real people by a machine that reduces the taking of life into a different kind of video game, and it frightens me. The purpose of this article is too clearly meant only to share the thrill of the remote kill. In the same issue, this article appeared: Beheaded man's father: revenge breeds revenge. The author clearly couldn't believe that Nicholas Berg's father wouldn't be thrilled that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had been killed:

But at some point, one would think, is there a moment when you say, 'I'm glad he's dead, the man who killed my son'?

and Michael Berg's response:

No. How can a human being be glad that another human being is dead?

______


It's the juxtaposition of these two pieces that I find so disconcerting and revealing. The Predator is praised; the pacifist is marginalized, and I'm off to uneasy sleep.


Oh, an article in the Washington Post, Public Secrets by Robert G. Kaiser: that's what I meant to write to the General.

Dove clip art from www.aperfectworld.org: