(February 19, 2015 at 5:27 pm)The Reality Salesman Wrote: And as a disclaimer...I teach F/A-18 Weapons at Strike Fighter Weapons School Atlantic, USN. I find the act of configuring weapons and their related systems to be easy to cope with. I don't know how I'd feel if I had to pull the trigger at close range. But, then again, somebody else has to do that. You see what I'm saying?
I understand fully what you're saying. In the Army, I was responsible for (amongst other things) the maintenance and repair of antitank missile systems (BGM-71 and associated launch equipment), and I am quite certain that the systems I worked on were used to kill people during the first gulf war in 1991. For that part of my involvement in the war, my conscience is clear. It's quite a different psychological "thing" from actually sighting down your weapon at another human being and pulling the trigger.
Is there a difference in morality, though? I don't know. I've come to be of the mind that once you commit yourself to offensive warfare, any claim to morality is dubious at best.
That being said, what makes me uncomfortable regarding the use of autonomous and remotely piloted vehicles (colloquially, "drones") is that the moral actor is removed from or at least substantially separated from the consequences of action - making it that much easier to engage in warfare. I don't know that it's immoral (see previous paragraph), but I can't see the removal of the human factor from warfare to be a step in the right direction.
