I saw the movie "Jarhead". I liked it quite a bit. A nice post-modernist war movie.

Rather than "war is pointless for us", it was "we are pointless in war." Ultimately the protagonists couldn't cope with not being able to do what they were "created" to do. Modern warfare is pretty inconceivable to most of us. We can rain down death upon untold millions without ever seeing their faces. But in the movie there IS something to see, and the soldiers see it.

It brings up the question: What IS the meaning of a death when one has the power to inflict it upon anyone and everyone with the push of a button. No imperator or khan in history has ever had that sort of power. Why is it even necessary to send troops into harm's way? Can people just be bombed into political submission? How many people should die and who? If we bomb a village in Pakistan to try and kill one terrorist, is that okay? If we bomb a maternity ward in Belgrade to try and humiliate Slobodan Milosevic, is that okay?

Is glory for the sake of glory (our economic power IS our glory) worth killing for? How are we different than the barbarians of the Middle Ages? Goths, and Avars, and Turks plundering out of lust... their enduring monuments the mounds of skulls left behind...

??/??/? 0rz