Confessions of a Capitalistic Warmonger

By William Eugene Malley III Copyright 2005    Okay, I admit it, I was very much for the Iraq war.  The way I saw it, we would go in, kick Saddam Hussein's butt, and leave.  If you watch the news, you know I was wrong.  The other 80% of the people in this country that were for the war, were wrong too.  I don't feel too stupid, misery loves company.      We also believed that we would be saving $.50 to a dollar on each gallon of gasoline.  Instead, we are paying at least $.50 more for a gallon for gasoline than we paid at the beginning of war.  I had no idea that over 1200 young men and women would die.  My own grandson came within a foot of being brought home in a body bag.  I was lucky, thousands of families haven't been.    I was under the impression we had all of these magic weapons.  These weapons would make it unnecessary for people to be in real danger on the ground.  Once again I was lied to.  Sure we have those weapons but only a couple of hundred, or at best, a few thousand.  The fact that our soldiers had to go into garbage dumps to get armor for their vehicles confuses and infuriates me.  Once again this proves that incompetence is the watchword at the Pentagon.

   I will never be pro human war again.  When I try to imagine what it would've been like for our family if Scotty had been killed, it makes me sick.  I'm lucky, I only have to try and imagine it, thousands of people are living it.  If you would like to try and understand how horrible war is, look at one of your kids, or one of your brothers or sisters, or your mom, or your dad, and imagine what would be like if they were killed in some stupid war.  They would be gone, gone forever, just to satisfy our national vanity.  Saddam Hussein was in no way a threat to the United States, he was just very annoying.  He was really only a danger to his own people, and neighboring countries. There are quite a few rulers around the world who are much worse than he ever thought of being.

   In the 21st-century we have many more tools at our disposal, tools we didn't have 50 years ago.  We need economic trade laws with real teeth and Patience, much more Patience. If blockades fail, we need mechanical Marines, robots.  When I say robots I don't mean humanoid robot's.  Think more along the lines of a bomb squad robot on steroids.  This would be in essence a miniature tank, operated by satellite links. Three men would operate the tank. One to drive, two to man the guns.  It would be more effective than three 12 man squads, and in the long run much less expensive to operate.  It infuriates me to see a squad of 12 bright young men creeping down a back alley, when the job could be done with so much less danger.  If the tank was blown up, there would be no loss of life.  They could immediately, with the flip of a switch, move the three-man crew to a nearby un-maned tank, and continue the battle.

  Say that these mini-tanks cost $1 million each, for one billion-dollars you could buy 1000 of them.  The technology to build these tank-bots is available now.  If they can build a robotic aircraft, I'm sure a robotic tank wouldn't be any problem at all.  The mentality of the Pentagon seems to be throw bodies at the enemy, when would be so much cheaper and more effective to throw machines at at them.  It's going to cost between $400,000 and $500,000 for each soldier killed in the Gulf Wars.  So any idiot can tell it's going to cost the government over $70 billion.  For this same $70 billion you could buy 70,000 $1 million dollar tank-bots.  If the tank-bots cost $2 million each, we could still buy 35,000 of these machines for the same money.

   These tanks could be moved in and out of service by robot helicopters flying off ships safely out to sea.  This would be necessary for refueling and rearming the robot vehicles.  Approximately half the volume of these vehicles would be fuel and ammunition.  They would be fully battle capable, and also have the ability to interreact verbally with the local population.  Each of these tanks could be on duty 24 hours a day seven days a week.  Their crews could be changed every six or eight hours.  The crews could be either on the ships, or even back in the USA.  This is the 21st-century, it's time for us to start thinking differently.

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