Give a young child a hammer and the child will determine that everything needs hammering. Give modern politicians high-tech weapons and they come to believe these weapons should be applied to solve political problems. It appears that foolish politicians, both in the US and Israel are wielding their weapons with the same results as children with hammers.
This behavior has become common enough to merit a label: let's call it technopathology, which we can define as excessive and inappropriate use of new technology to the detriment of society. When technopathology involves cell phones or instant messaging, it creates minor annoyances, but when it involves deadly weapons, the consequences are terrible. What follows is a discussion of the misuse of modern weapons by foolish polititicans.
There has indeed been a revolution in military affairs in the last few decades. The tremendous enhancement of communications and computing power we see in the civil sector has had a big impact in military weapons and tactics. Here is a summary of key advances:
1. Precision-guided weapons have greatly increased the lethality of almost all weapons platforms. Any target that can be located can be engaged with a high probability of destruction.
2. Massive improvements in the quality and quantity of communication and information available to military forces have tremendously accelerated the speed of decision-making and the rate at which damage can be inflicted on an enemy.
3. Electronic media have been harnessed to provide psychological operations support for battlefield efforts. A steady stream of propaganda, disguised as news, is used to boost morale and secure political backing for military actions.
The political consequences of these advances in military technology have, unfortunately, been largely negative. The increased destructiveness and speed of action of modern weapons makes it harder for politicians to control the scope of "limited" warfare. Moreover, there appears to be a pattern of finding circumstances justifying use of weapons, rather than adapting the use of weapons to the political situation.
For example, Israel's modern attack aircraft can precisely target and destroy individual buildings. Israel has proceeded to destroy hundreds of buildings in Lebanon, with no clear political objective served by this action, other than some kind of collective punishment of the Lebanese. Similarly, the Apache attack helicopters of the Israeli Air Force can target and destroy individual moving vehicles. Although Israel often misidentifies vehicles and kills fleeing civilians in cars, trucks, and busses, it continues to blow up vehicles with American Hellfire missiles.
A precision-guided weapon is not used precisely if it is fired at the wrong target. But those afflicted by military technopathology are so conditioned to the satisfying cycle of target and destroy that it doesn't matter to them. Each destroyed target validates the superiority of their technology, while, as in Lebanon, often worsening their political situation.
In summary, the availability of modern weapons has led politicians to confuse precise destruction of targets with the precise application of military force. Meanwhile, they have been emboldened in their aggressive use of high-tech weapons by the availability of sophisticated electronic propaganda tools to mask their mistakes.
Foolish misuse of modern weapons has contributed greatly to the American debacle in Iraq and appears to be worsening Israel's situation in Lebanon. Unfortunately many more people will be killed and wounded before our childish politicians have their high-tech hammers taken away.