American politics
Democracy in America
The fog of war
- Apr 5th 2010, 22:54 by R.M. | NEW YORK
IN THIS week's paper we examine attempts to build ethical understanding into pilotless war planes, which would allow these machines to contribute to the decision to fire on a designated target. The idea is to input them with information so that they can quickly evaluate the likely damage to be caused from an attack and who (civilians, insurgents, friendly forces) will be most affected. "Software conscience" is the term used to describe it, and it's a nice thought, considering the numerous stories of civilian casualties resulting from air attacks and even conventional raids (see the post below).
Any effort to cut through the fog of war is welcome, but let us not forget how thick that fog is. Today Andrew Sullivan (via wikileaks) flags one of the most tragic, disturbing and riveting videos I have seen out of Iraq. And while Mr Sullivan quickly concludes that what we're seeing is a war crime, I think that is an over-simplified reaction to a complicated event. Here is the video:
I've watched this video a couple of times now, first with outrage similar to Mr Sullivan's, then with an eye towards seeing what the pilots saw. I don't mean to turn this tragedy into a psychological experiment, but I'm reminded of this selective attention test. By way of the text and markers in the video we are prodded to see one side of the event. (The helicopter pilots do not help matters with their casual approach to killing and intermittent laughter.) But ask yourselves, would you have been able to distinguish between the journalists' cameras and the guns some of the other men were carrying? More importantly, did you see the man with the RPG? Did you see him poke around the corner and seem to aim it at the helicopter?
Perhaps that is still not justification enough for the slaughter that ensued. I will let the Pentagon try to defend the act of firing on those helping the wounded. But I think the scene is more ambiguous than it first appears, and I think the pilots could make a case that they thought they were being engaged by armed insurgents. (We do not know why the helicopter was in the area.) I'm sure many of you will disagree, but my broader point is that no matter how precise our weaponry gets, no matter how much information we feed into our targeting systems, the decision to fire will always be based on incomplete information and come down to fallible human judgment. So while it is normal to react to these tragedies with varying degrees of moral repugnance, let us not be shocked. This is the nature of war and there is only one truly effective way to avoid such incidents.
No comments:
Post a Comment