Link Banana

William Saletan sees the impersonality of killing with aerial drones — now made more videogame-like by Raytheon — as a bad thing:

Is the “synthetic environment” real? That depends on which end of the missile you’re looking at. In the targeted car, it’s as real as death. But from the console, it looks more like virtual reality. If the drone goes down, you’re not in it. The environment you actually inhabit is pretty nice. To enhance “operator comfort,” Raytheon offers “ergonomic, memory seating,” “ergonomically-correct displays,” and “adjustable hand and foot positions.” According to the Associated Press, “The leather chair is adaptable to individual users, who can also control a heating and cooling duct above their head at the touch of a switch.”

If you’ve seen combat in the flesh, you know what the fireball on the screen means to the people in the car. But to a teenager raised on Doom and Halo, it looks like just another score. He can’t feel or smell the explosion. He isn’t even there. The eeriest thing in the demo video is the total silence that accompanies the car’s destruction. The only sound that follows is the pilot’s triumphant verdict: “Excellent job.” It’s like something you’d read on the screen after getting a high score at an arcade.

Germany has no medal for military valor, and hasn’t had one since the end of World War II.

The traditional Iron Cross is tainted by association with the Nazi era. Hitler awarded his version of it—complete with a swastika stamped in its centre—to thousands of those who committed atrocities across Europe. But advocates of the Iron Cross argue that the honour predates the Third Reich by 120 years. It is also a familiar sight on German military vehicles and planes around the world.

A petition to parliament to revive the Iron Cross last year gathered more than 5,000 votes—and some attention from the far right. The Central Council of Jews in Germany objects strongly to its revival. A more gentle approach is being tried by the Association of Military Reservists. Ernst-Reinhard Beck, its chairman, says the important thing is not the Iron Cross, but the principle of a bravery medal to bring German troops into line with the soldiers from other countries serving alongside them.

The government has accepted in principle the need for a gallantry award, but balks at an Iron Cross. Instead officials are working on a proposal that would add a “bravery” category to the bronze, silver and gold levels of the existing Ehrenzeichen (badge of honour), which is usually given for long or distinguished service. Defence sources say the idea could be approved by President Horst Köhler by the end of the year. But what would the Red Baron think of it?

Speaking of America’s military… (I’m also getting tired of that opening, but I like the idea of having segues.) Matthew Yglesias has posted an interesting graph of the number of American troops in Iraq from invasion to date.  It’s interesting to see, though I have to agree with the commenters that it would be nice if the y-axis had started at 0 and not 100,000.

Fred Kaplan’s not completely satisfied that Robert Gates wants 187 of the planes, and he’s even less satisfied that the Air Force still wants 381.

Still, even stodgy bureaucrat-generals need a rationale to keep their favorite programs afloat. The F-22 is the centerpiece of Air Force procurement at the moment. It has nearly no role in the sorts of wars that the United States has been fighting in the last 20 years—or has much prospect of fighting in the next 20.

And so, the China threat is dragged out of the cellar once again, as it has been to justify troubled weapons systems for 40 years now.

Fred Kaplan’s profile of Robert Gates, the Secretary of Defense, in tomorrow’s New York Times Magazine’s worth reading. This bit left me with no doubt he’s an admirable man, whether or not he’s always right:

At the Marine Corps Association’s annual dinner in July, Gates cried while eulogizing Capt. Douglas Zembiec, a marine known as “the lion of Fallujah,” who had recently died in battle. By that time, Gates was writing personal notes at the bottom of every condolence letter sent to families of troops killed in battle. “I want the recipient of that note to know that the secretary of defense actually saw that letter, signed that letter, thought about that letter,” he told me on the plane ride back from Fort Hood. “It forces me to pay attention to every single one of the young people killed — how they died, where their hometown is, what other members of their unit were killed. I’ve kept count — 796 Americans have been killed in Iraq on my watch.” (This was as of Nov. 27.) He denied that he keeps count as an explicit corrective to Rumsfeld’s deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, who at one Congressional hearing admitted that he didn’t know how many troops had died in the war that he helped to start. Still, the contrast has been widely noticed, not least by marines and soldiers.

The Economist’s Asia.view column brings a necessary reminder about the strong-as-ever military junta ruling Myanmar Burma.

The row over the timing of Mr Gambari’s visit shows the powerlessness of the UN against a regime determined not to mend its ways. It also shows that regime’s cunning: it has managed to turn a debate about the fundamental rights of its citizens into an administrative wrangle about a visa for a visiting diplomat.

As Britain’s ambassador, Mark Canning, has put it, “the name of the game” for the junta is staying off the front pages. The worldwide sympathy evoked by the “saffron revolution” made that seem a hard game to play. But these generals are past masters.

John Nagl, one of military’s most well-known members among civilians (he was on The Daily Show, for example), is leaving the service. Slate’s Fred Kaplan offers an interesting reason for the Army’s brain drain:

The prolonged and repeated tours in Iraq were among the reasons for the trend. This is not the case for Nagl. But he represents another problem that the all-volunteer military is facing—the growing influence of the modern soldier’s family. It’s not that more soldiers have families than was once the case; in fact, the numbers are about the same as they were 30 years ago. But it is the case that more men in the military are married to professional women. In the past, many, if not most, officers married women who had grown up in military families. (Gen. Petraeus married the daughter of West Point’s superintendent.) They knew what the gig was when they took it—the endless rotations, the life of never settling down in one place, of a career officer. Now, many officers’ wives (or, in the case of female officers, their husbands) have their own careers; they don’t want to spend years in Fort Riley, Kan., then a few years more in Fort Hood, Texas. And at some point in the trade-off between private and professional lives, the officer gives in to his or her spouse, takes a stable job, buys a house, and gets out of the service.