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Comment by EB-BarringtonII | Hacker News Reader

Counterpoint from my time in a brutal warzone, as a civilian.

Maybe if you voluntarily join the military of a country known for invasions and war, you're not that helpless to begin with. And, if you get sent to another country with the goal to kill soldiers and civilians, and you yourself get killed by a drone it’s not that chilling.

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I'm not American and I was not thinking from the perspective of an American inclined to join the US military.

Moreover consider that the situation sucks both for the soldier being blown up and also for the one doing the blowing up. If I were to be a soldier, I would like the option of taking the enemy prisoner if I could, instead of having to needlessly turn them into minced meat. I think, it is a very human desire to make war, less cruel.

The positive aspect of drones is that maybe war will turn in a purely economic contest, drones against drones, until one side has exhausted their supply and are forced to declare defeat.

> I'm not American and I was not thinking from the perspective of an American inclined to join the US military.

I would have thought your first inclination would be to say you're not Russian and not thinking from the perspective of a Russian inclined to join in on the unjust invasion of Ukraine.

But you could also perhaps look at it from the perspective of someone who is a member of Hamas, bombing and attacking civilian targets, or the IRGC launching one of the hundreds to thousands of drone attacks unjustly.

> The positive aspect of drones is that maybe war will turn in a purely economic contest, drones against drones, until one side has exhausted their supply and are forced to declare defeat.

I think in an age of more deadly drone warfare and less human intervention you'll start to see more deaths and more destruction.

So what about when your warzone turns into a peace zone, civilians start to move back in, and autonomous drones left behind by militaries start to kill them?

There are still countries in the world that have landmines from previous wars, after all.

Batteries don't last that long

I suspect that some clever engineer could figure that out. Small solar cells or something maybe, idk.

You're trying to invent a problem :)

Agree. However the key word there is "voluntarily". If a war gets too ugly, the supply of volunteers will dry up. And then you're looking at a draft.

It's been a while since the vietnam war, but we (the general public in the US) have forgotten how ugly a war can be.

I’d say the USA has collectively forgotten the last time they were in a “civilians involved” war, which I’d place back to the Civil War.

WWII gave us Rosie the Riveter, rationing of materials and goods, internment, Pearl Harbor, etc.

9/11 was narrow geographically but had a large emotional, political, and economic impact stateside.

All those are true but they didn’t have bombs dropping on them.

In the civil war not only might your son be sent to the front, but the front might end up in your yard.

Yeah, it's been awhile since then. Normally when bombs get dropped on Americans we do to ourselves. (Tulsa, for example)

This is where just a refusal to participate comes in. I think I've posted this or other Tolstoy stuff on here before, but Tolstoy makes the best point about this:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1968/02/advice-...

> And to this question, for a person who understands the true meaning of military service and who wants to be moral, there is only one clear and incontrovertible answer: such a person must refuse to take part in military service no matter what consequences this refusal may have.

That's fine while we're talking about countries with all volunteer militaries, but that list does not include any of Russia, Ukraine, Iran, nor Israel.

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