Target

In reading A History of Bombing, I was surprised and overwhelmed by the different ways in which humans developed and improved artillery, military strategy, bombs, and much more for the sake of overpowering the other nations. Humans destroy as many lives as they create them. My question was, how can one face another human being and point a gun, or a destructive equipment/weapon, at them to kill?

While watching "Collateral Murder" I remember an article I read last quarter titled "The psychology of killing and the origins of war." In the article Dan Bailey finds that "Humans excel at overcoming our biological limitations using technological innovation." After WWII, the U.S. used pop-up human-shaped targets as practice for new recruits and "combat simulation exercises and war games" were used as part of the training. This was to help in automatic responses during combat. Going back to "humans excel at overcoming our biological limitations," I feel that that is what happened in "Collateral Murder." Shooting from an Apache helicopter gave the soldiers the distance they needed to kill another human without witnessing the life draining out of them (I'm excluding cannibalism, human sacrifice practices (which would make it easier to kill, I suppose), and other such practices). In class, we saw how it was like a video game and even the teams were conversing in such a way as they would with friends while playing a military base video game. They were completely detached from the people they targeted. This is only one of the many ways in which war becomes easier, and the targets become a thing to destroy rather than a group of living breathing humans.

In A History of Bombing we also saw how easy it was to drop bombs in a chosen country/city/town without ever witnessing the damages to its inhabitants (Japan, Morocco, Ethiopia, etc.). In chapter six we read how Britain bombed many of their colonies to test out their bombs and to civilized the inhabitants. War becomes easier without making contact with the people their killing. If we keep "overcoming our biological limitations" (aversion to killing, specifically) by inventing creative ways of killing, would there ever be peace (or a stop to war)?