Other than suffering hearing loss and having occasional nightmares, the young U.S. Army Ranger across the table appeared somewhat grateful for his two tours in Afghanistan and one stint in Iraq. He mentioned how he and other Rangers would be “dropped” into an area in Afghanistan at night and attack unsuspecting Taliban fighters who were usually asleep. When I asked him about an After Action Report or debriefing and if he had knowledge of ever killing innocent civilians, the he replied that only his commanders were debriefed or ever saw the After Action Reports.

He too excitedly described how the new computerized Strykers in Iraq were mounted with .50-Cals and other high-tech weapons systems that did most of the fighting for his unit. During some raids, his unit did not even have to disembark and all fighting was done from inside the Stryker with its all-seeing computer tracking systems and its overwhelming fire power. When I asked about what actions they took when his Ranger unit encountered heavy resistance, he replied that they called in air support which usually leveled the target or area of resistance.

I must admit the modern U.S. military and the wars it fights has drastically changed from the early 1980‘s. I can still recall commandeering sluggish Armored Personnel Carriers and toting around heavy anti-tank weapons. Military computers were rudimentary and it seemed battles were fought at a much closer distance. During a recent conversation, perhaps this is why a U.S. Air Force mechanic was incapable of understanding how we slaughtered 5,000 civilians in the 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama. It may also explain why a U.S. Army Major just told me that President Bush should have just “nuked” Iraq, or a jet fighter trainee seemed surprised when I asked if he ever thought about the possibility of accidentally killing innocent civilians while firing missiles.

Lately there has been a rash of new books about how future warfare will consist of robots and laser-guided weapons. But in some ways, war has already been made easy to wage, especially through Assembly Line Militarism. Although the idea of an assembly line had existed before Henry Ford, he helped popularize its use in manufacturing. He was able to mass produce automobiles by combining thousands of sub-assembly lines and dividing the work into simple tasks that unskilled workers could do. The time spent in building an automobile went from 12 hours to 93 minutes and a new automobile was rolling off the line every 10 seconds. With the mass production of autos, of course, new markets needed to be developed with slick advertising campaigns.

Just as the assembly line changed the automobile industry, Assembly Line Militarism has revolutionized U.S. warfare. Millions of workers and soldiers labor in the U.S. armaments and defense industries and are assigned to simple repetitive tasks that require very little thought. Not only are they alienated from each other and the final product (war) or how it is being used, but they have surrendered their clout and responsibility to the managers and owners (Pentagon). These militant corporate executives, generals and politicians are in a constant search of inventing new weapons systems and finding new markets to sell or test their destructive products (wars) so as to gain a profit.

At the same time, these sub-assembly lines feed into a Permanent War Economy that has produced 6000 domestic armed bases and over 750 foreign military stations in 130 countries around the globe. Military institutions like the Pentagon, Department of Defense (DOD), National Security Agency, Rand Corporation, CIA, Veterans Administration, and DARPA demands total compliance while at the same time justifying wars. The 85,000 private military firms like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Northrop Gruman, Symantec Corporation, Hewlett Packard, Bechtel, Technology Strategies, Raytheon, Vinnell, Armor Holdings, AT&T, Atlas Air, I-Sector, TriMass, and Cisco are happy to promote and market such wars, particularly since they receive multi-billion dollar DOD contracts.

In the end, the American taxpayers, workers, and soldiers are similar to the victims they indirectly or directly kill. Assembly Line Militarism isolates and disconnects the individual from the final product and what it is used for-in this case war and the horrors of death and destruction. It bleeds the very essence of life from the humane. Work and killing becomes drudgery for citizens who die a slow agonizing death. Individuation replaces individuality and resistance is repressed. War-making commodities are deceptively imbued with human qualities like Army Strong, Shock and Awe, and a recent commercial with a loud fighter jet and caption reading: The Sound of Freedom. Even worse, violent entertainment and the consumption of war is substituted for democracy and vibrant citizenry.

The U.S. does not need to manufacture robots, for it already has millions of automated workers and computerized soldiers who are alienated and dehumanized from the rest of humanity and their own. In trying to make the world safe for democracy, President Woodrow Wilson was knew who his masters were when he said, “So long as you have a military class, it does not make any difference what your form of government is; if you are determined to be armed to the teeth, you must obey the only men who can control the great machinery of war. Elections are of minor importance.” (1) From the Stone Age to the era of Assembly Line Militarism, have we truly become more humane or just more efficient at killing through the propagating and manufacturing of wars?

(Dallas Darling is the author of The Other Side Of Christianity: Reflections on Faith, Politics, Spirituality, History, and Peace, and is a writer for www.worldnews.com

You can read more of his articles at www.beverlydarling.com.
(1) Hossein-Zadeh, Ismael. The Political Economy of U.S. Militarism. Palgrave MacMillan: New York, New York, 2006. p. 144.