Originally posted by Nilsen
So who will decide when and were they can be used, and should they be made responsible for removing the duds later?
I have no short and sweet answers to your questions to offer. I will however go back to the rules of so-called civilized warfare that I referred to. That is a collosal contradiction in terms. War is insanity on a massive scale. Do I sometimes condone it myself? Yes, I'm a human living in the 21st century living amongst others of the same kind who still resort to force of arms to advance their agenda or to defend it from a like-minded aggressor advancing his own. It'll sure be swell when we advance as a society enough that warfare is only something written about in history books. Too bad that's a utopian vision that if it ever materializes will do so long, long after we are all dust. Look at the forum in which we're posting - the Aces High BB. A lot, probably most of us including myself originally came here to play a war game. If we can't be engaged in a real war we'll do so vicariously through a game by choice. We still celebrate war. That is the current state of human "civilization".
I'm starting to digress....
War is messy, people die - they always have, they always will for as long as armed conflict persists. The purpose of any type of avanced weaponry is to shorten a conflict by hastening victory and in so doing REDUCE casualties - when all is said and done to REDUCE CASUALTIES. I don't like the way it works. Maybe it would "seem" better if all the casualties happened at once ala Hiroshima or the firebombings of Dresden, Hamburgh, and Tokyo. Then we can just quickly get it over with and start to collectively forget about it till the next one comes along. Its a little more tidy and easier to live with than seeing casualties that come in dribs and drabs here and there after the cessation of immediate hostilities no matter that TOTAL CASUALTIES are reduced. Its an established fact that people rapidly become desensitized to mass casualities. They don't have to think about individual names, faces, combatant or civilian, man, woman or child. I don't see how we can sanely debate how to kill each other in a more "civilized" fashion.
I think I need some of that Johnnie Walker now. I'm getting depressed. Then maybe I'll pop into one of the game arenas and see how many kills I can get...