All these mediating gadgets, however sensitive, must blunt the sense of war in those who use them. Translated into so many blips and telecasts, the fact of war becomes no more than a pressing abstraction, charged with suspense but not noticeably bloody. The same effect obtains for many individual soldiers, those elite technicians encased in the finest jets and tanks, which are built to devastate a countryside and its inhabitants without themselves sustaining any damage. Raised above the crawling infantry, these men are accoutred to approach a battle as their superiors are equipped to gauge it - in a mood of perfect equilibrium and snug detachment. Suspended in this state of artificial infancy - the same state that attracts us all to the promise of advanced technology - the soldier would seem to become psychologically incapable of spoiling for a fight, of closing with some tough opponent, but wants instead to search and destroy without risk, to translate his belligerence into his buttons and extensions, and simply let his fingers do the warring.
Mark Cripin Miller, "How TV Covers War," Boxed In, p. 153
