No, this isn't a war blog, but given the virtual lock-step surrender of the opposition party in the United States the other day, what general of the Dark Kingdom could resist a delicious look into the future of war? It's cold, cruel and politically incorrect... but it says what has to be said. In the future it will be wars between societies with machines and those without. And it will look like this:

The loser countries, the ones who can't do math, are gonna skip shop class, skip the machine crap, and go back to basics: kill a lot of people. They'll do Columbine on a worldwide scale. All the losers will come to the lobby with guns. Serbs, North Koreans, Tamil Sri Lankans, will walk into the lobbies of the machine peoples' towers like Keanu in The Matrix. They will splatter those security guards, they will smash up the decorative marble, they will disrupt office routine with drums of gasoline and vials of pesticide and rerouted sewage floods; they will turn the cities against their citizens and kill, kill, kill.

I have something to say on the topic of machine war myself. In the past, wars were fought face to face between armies of men who looked into their opponent's eyes before killing them.

Soldiers who killed, or saw their friends killed, came home with a profound respect for the grave ramifications of war. They saw firsthand the destruction, devastation, grief and suffering endured. This made men loathe war, regarding it as a policy of last resort, not a thing to be entered into lightly.

Unfortunately, in this era of killing at a distance, the warriors are often dozens, if not hundreds of miles away from their targets. The only thing that sees the horrified eyes of a potential target is a faceless bomb with no conscience or capacity for taking something away from the experience of combat.

Now I have no doubt that today's soldiers are well-aware of the gravity of war making, because they know they too must face death in the battlefield at some point, even if it is a remote possibility.

But what of their leaders, the politicians, who for the most part, avoided service or served in non-combat positions in the relative safety of the homeland? How long will it be before the last check on the indiscriminate destruction of life, the sentient human soldier, is removed from the system, and only the machine remains? How long before President X, upon inauguration, is given a box with a red button in it-- a button which will allow the deployment of devastating automated weapons upon any point in the globe, subject only to the need for an authorization code supplied by the Congress, which, stacked with members of President X's party members, would easily be obtainable?

When the Iraqi Vice-President today suggested that there be a duel between the leaders of the two nations, it was dismissed as a joke-- and indeed, there is little honor left in Iraqi leadership at this point-- but a valid point does exist. If our leaders, who so easily speak of war, and of "going it alone", had to actually lead their troops onto the battlefield, face the hail of bullets and rain of bombs, and secure victory themselves, perhaps they might be a bit more careful with people's lives.