In other words, as Jamie Shea and other NATO spokespersons never stopped telling us, destroying every bridge in Belgrade, polluting the Danube for years to come, taking out electricity and water installations and bombing that civilian TV station in which the reporters running it were killed, were all justifiable military actions. Now that sort of excuse fuels my moral outrage , just as it fuels my derisive laughter to see photo opportunities of a steely-jawed Tony Blair or an overweight Secretary of Defence gazing purposefully from the turret of a tank, as though being with real soldiers will help them to become macho by osmosis. Well, pardon me, but whereas I have genuine respect for the military, I always thought that footballers were trained to play football, firemen to put out fires, and soldiers to fight. The risk of injury or worse goes with the job. This is not said to score easy points, but to express a deeper concern.
People are expendable, technology is sacrosanct.
That is the ultimate logic of materialist society. It has bizarre moral consequences. Since 1991, at no loss of life to themselves, or, more importantly, loss of equipment, America and her allies have done literally hundreds of millions of pounds-worth of damage to Iraq's military and social infrastructure. Despite that, Saddam Hussein is still firmly in power, but perhaps 1 million Iraqi children have died for want of basic necessities. Let us recognise that those two categories, like the Biblical precedents on which they were based, could also be flawed.