Page 2 of 2 <

Coming to the Battlefield: Stone-Cold Robot Killers

Discussion Policy

Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.

No human army could withstand such an onslaught. Such an adversary would present the enemy with the simple choice of martyrdom or flight. So equipped, America's military would be irresistible in battle.

This would not be a panacea. Thugs would still rob pedestrians, organized crime would persist and so too would terrorists and other small bands of men of violence. But the large-scale organized killing that has characterized six millenniums of human history could be ended by the fiat of the American Peace.

Genocide, and the failure of the outside word to intervene, could also become a thing of the past. The industrialized murder of the Holocaust could perhaps have been disrupted by Allied bombers, but subsequent genocides have been less institutionalized, and far less vulnerable to air power. Intervention would require infantry and a decision to accept casualties. Genocide prevention may be in the interest of our common humanity, but it has never been in the national interest. But with no body bags to explain to bewildered voters, America's leaders may be less hesitant in the future about imposing an end to atrocities in places such as Darfur.

john@globalsecurity.org

John Pike is the director of the military information Web site GlobalSecurity.org.

< 2