Last semester in a seminar on 21st century Warfare and Technology, I argued that warfare was being viewed by many in this nation as clinical, akin to a rather energetically played videogame and this misperception might lead to future conflicts. This contention was scuffed at by the keynote speaker, due to the development of the asymmetrical warfare within Iraq (after the fall of Saddam Hussein). For me, it was interesting to later read in Bob Woodward's book Plan of Attack, written shortly after I made the argument, a particularly apropos quote. This quote is not indicative of the particular direction the book takes, but simply what the Secretary of State was feeling on the eve of the invasion of Iraq. I believe I have the quote correctly represented, but I no longer have the book. The list at the library is quite extensive.
"As chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the eve of the 1991 Gulf War, he [Colin Powell] had sat alone in his office at the Pentagon, room 2e878, remembering the famous remark by Robert E. Lee: 'it is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it.' The Confederate General knew the horror of war. Now in 2001, from Washington in the Pentagon and the White House, and even his own State Department, war seemed antiseptic, and at times like a great game."
Billy
"It is not the length of life, but the depth of life."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - Helps protect you from nasty viruses.
