Latest / The Catholic Current / Dehumanizing the Modern Battlefield (Bill Whittle) 8/6/26

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Dehumanizing the Modern Battlefield (Bill Whittle) 8/6/26 · The Catholic Current

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This is The Catholic Current with Father Robert
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Matague. Aristocracy is rooted in the word arete,
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virtue. So aristocracy is meant to be rule by the virtuous.
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I don't see anyone like that on the world stage today. Why is
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that, in your view? There's no question that you're correct. You don't see anybody
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out there with that kind of moral power, and I don't see them
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out there either. But just because we don't see them doesn't mean they're not there.
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Our history is pretty much an endless, unbroken series of people that
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needed to be there when we needed them to be Praise
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be Jesus Christ. This is Father Robert McTeague of the Society of Jesus, your daily
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host for The Catholic Current, where we bring Christ to the world and the world
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to Christ. You're listening to us from the Station of the Cross Studios, your local
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radio station, the iCatholic Radio mobile app. We proclaim the fullness of truth
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with clarity and charity. As always, let's start with prayer.
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In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Almighty God, through the
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intercession of Saint Ignatius Loyola, we ask that you pour forth your Holy Spirit upon
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us, a spirit of discernment that might hear your voice and obey your command.
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In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Well, friends,
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you know that I have been a rabid consumer of
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news since at least junior high school, also something of
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a student of history. And I know that human beings spend
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a lot of their time and energy trying to kill each other efficiently and preferably
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in large numbers. That's what warfare is. It's part
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of the human condition right now. And every
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now and again, things happen that affect and reshape the battle
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space in ways that ripple out in a manner that people
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cannot anticipate. And I think we're in one of those inflection
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points right now. Things are changing in a way that I
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think we're not gonna like, and I think we're not gonna get the genie back
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in the bottle. So I wanted to talk to someone who shares my interest in,
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in history and what goes on in war now and back
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then. And I respect him because he's an honest man with integrity,
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and he's an honest and rigorous thinker, and he's one
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of my go-to guys when I teach rhetoric as well. You can
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find his good work at BillWhittle.com. Bill Whittle, welcome back to The
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Catholic Current. It's always a pleasure, Father, and I have such a
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great time on these shows and learn so much from you. Oh, you're very kind.
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But I want to talk about dehumanizing the modern battlefield, because on your
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channel, Right Angle, which you do with Scott Ott and Stephen
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Green, you talked about life and death on the modern battlefield, and you were talking,
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and particularly about autonomous drones, and that got
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me thinking that there are times when technology steps on
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the battlefield and it reshapes it. In the Civil
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War, there'd never been a war that had trains and telegraph
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before, and World War I was the age of the battleship.
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World War II, radar and aircraft carriers changed
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the world. In the '60s and '70s, you had intercontinental ballistic missiles.
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In the '80s, the Tomahawk missile, the first standoff platforms,
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are introduced into the American arsenal. In the '90s, we move into precision-guided
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munitions where they practically show up and ring the doorbell.
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In the 2010s, we had hypersonic weapons.
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You had cyber warfare, and now you have autonomous
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drones. You can send a drone loaded for bear,
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if you will, send them to a grid point on the
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map and just say, kill everything that's there.
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You can do that with a click of the mouse, and then it does.
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I think this will change human history in
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a way that will be, one, we don't like, and B, it'll be irrevocable if
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we don't stop it soon. What are your thoughts on that? Well,
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it's— it is without question crossing a Rubicon of moral
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responsibility that if we allow it to continue will take us
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down some very bad roads. So let's just clarify for our audience that may not
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be clear on this. I've seen People have seen clips of drone warfare from
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the Ukraine war. Virtually everybody's seen some of those. One of the,
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one of the earth-changing innovations back in
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the '70s and '80s was the suicide bomb. It was basically a guided missile
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aimed at civilians, and that was a revolutionary weapon.
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When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022,
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Ukraine is quite a well-developed country technologically. In fact,
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Ukraine built all of the big Soviet aircraft carriers. Are all built
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at the Ukrainian yards. So they weren't picking on a country that didn't know
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how to build things. And the Ukrainians basically invented drone warfare.
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And at first, the drones consisted of flying over personnel
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and dropping essentially streamlined hand grenades.
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But this evolved rather quickly into something more efficient and much
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more terrifying. I, I don't think there's a worse situation
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to be in than in World War I, and I'm sure we'll come back to
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World War I in a minute. But this is, this is even more
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terrifying than in World War I, because in World one, you could at least hide
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in a trench or in a dugout. These first-person drones are flown
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by a human operator. They spot an enemy on the ground.
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They fly the drone directly into contact with the enemy.
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There are a series of just electrical probes on the front of the drone.
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And when these probes come into contact, it sets off the explosive.
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So the best way to think about drone warfare prior to
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what we talked about on the show was to think of it as a
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precision-guided heat-seeking hand grenade that
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there was no escape from. If you got into a bunker and
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underneath a berm or a tunnel, the drone would just fly in there
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and kill you there. It was a particularly terrifying form
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of death. But this is the critical point about drone warfare prior
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to this segment we did the show on. Those drones were being flown
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by Ukrainian pilots. Wearing virtual reality
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goggles. They were killing people one-to-one.
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One of the horrors of drone warfare is since
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you need video feedback for the pilot to see where the drone is and
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to guide the drone into the individual person, he's getting footage
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in real time back from that drone. And so these first-person
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killer drones that had dominated the battlefield in Ukraine for the last 2,
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3 years, have a human face on it, and, and the person
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who is operating the drone gets a very good look at the man he's just
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about to kill. And, and that is an important part of the equation,
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which we'll get to in a minute. What the Ukrainians did that caused
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us to do the show was they said, no, we're going to mark off some
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GPS coordinates, we're going to build a GPS fence where we know the enemy
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is, and if anything moves inside that fence, the drone
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doesn't have to have a human contact anymore. The drone
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will detect any kind of movement inside this GPS We know our Ukrainian
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guys are outside the fence, so it's going to go in there and
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it's just going to fly in and kill anything that moves. And that
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is the first time in human history where the
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human is completely out of the loop. This is
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the first time in history that people are being killed. Yes, first time
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that people are being killed without another human being killing
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them. Now, for the sake of our viewers who are going to be with us
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for the length of this program, I just would like to say this once at
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the beginning. All war is horrible. All war is waste and destruction and
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misery and grief. People die hard in war. Yes.
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So if I'm going to be talking about techniques
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and strategies and tactics and so on, that conversation
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can get very critical, can get very clinical and very sterile.
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And I don't want anybody to think that I personally believe that this is
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how things should be looked at. On the contrary.
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So we have to reduce this down to the sterile mechanics of
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it, but I don't want anybody to think for a minute that that means that
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I don't value the fact that both the person being killed
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and the person doing the killing are humans and they're going to pay an emotional
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price for this. So our argument was, our argument was
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with these autonomous drones was it frees the Ukrainians
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from having killed anybody. And my feeling
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is, is that you want to emerge victorious in
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war, but You cannot take the cost of war out
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of the equation, and you can't even take it out for the victors.
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I'm completely in favor of standoff weapons for
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American troops. I'm completely in favor of precision bombing for American
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troops. All of these things to save American lives. During Iraq and Iran,
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there were just endless, endless cases where they would come under fire.
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They'd either put out a GPS coordinate or put a
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laser target designator, and some bomber would fly out
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of the sky and wipe out that building. And if that saves American
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lives, I am 100% behind that because I'm, I'm a hawk.
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I'm a hawk because I believe in peace, and I believe that the only way
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to maintain peace is to, is to be strong enough not to be threatened
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by it. But my point is this: the pilot who drops that bomb and the
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guy on the ground who designates that target knows on some level
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that he is about to kill human beings. And he's about
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to kill human beings that are trying to kill him. I have no problem with
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this. But when weapons fly through the battle space,
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make a decision on their own based on AI criteria,
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and go in and kill human beings, it reduces the cost
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of warfare to the victors. Right. To the victors.
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Right. And see, that's the key. We're going to come up on a break,
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Bill. That's the key element here,
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is— and I do believe that even today,
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this very day, there can be such a thing as a just
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war. That's part of natural law. I accept that.
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But war, even a just war, should be entered into
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with tremendous sorrow because people
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are going to die horribly and people are going
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to kill each other horribly, and that affects human bodies and
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human souls and human communities Which is why
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it's dehumanizing to have become trigger-happy.
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And part of what scares me about this technology, and I think it's the basis
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of your hesitation too, is that it makes it too easy
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that we're just letting the machines do it
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and we never have to think about what's being done.
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This isn't like setting up a booby trap or a landmine or something
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like that. We've made a hunter predator to
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hunt humans, and we're not being faced
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with the enormity of what that means. And I don't
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think that's good for us as a species. That doesn't help us build a
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moral house in which we would want to live. Friends, when we come back,
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we're going to continue our conversation with Bill Whittle. You can find his very good
11:06
work at billwhittle.com. He's an honest and thoughtful man. Check out his work.
11:10
We're talking about dehumanizing the modern battlefield.
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Current.
12:21
Praise be Jesus Christ. This is Father Robert McTeague of the Society of Jesus,
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your daily host for The Catholic Current, where we bring Christ to the world and
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the world to Christ. You're listening to us from the Station of the Cross Studios,
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your local radio station, The iCatholic Radio mobile app. We proclaim the fullness
12:35
of truth with clarity and charity. We're talking about dehumanizing
12:39
the modern battlefield. My returning guest is someone I
12:43
respect very greatly, Bill Whittle. You can find his good work at billwhittle.com.
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But we were just getting warmed up that when you take
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the human element out of killing human beings,
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something happens, something's lost.
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Let's talk about that. Okay, what I'd like to do, Father, is to tie—
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is to tie this warfare aspect into, um,
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your daily life and the daily life of Catholic priests
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everywhere. Um, part of your duties, if not maybe your
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major theological duty, is absolving people
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of their sins. Yes. Uh, they confess their sins and then they are
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absolved of their sins. And you've done this hundreds of thousands
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of times, and so have most Catholic priests. If you
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have a weapon system that activates itself
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and goes and kills another human being on its own initiative,
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you have nothing to be absolved of. You have absolved yourself.
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And, and this is a game that you can play psychologically.
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I didn't kill the guy. I just put the drone in the area. The drone
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killed the guy. If, right, if that mentality
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catches on, then we all of a sudden find
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ourselves in a world where where the victors don't pay any price for the
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victory. I, I, I say things out of as much intellectual
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clarity as I can, and when people hear me speaking
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with this kind of clarity, I know it's very tempting for them to think that
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I'm some kind of a monster, that, that I don't deeply care
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about the cost on, on our soldiers. I've done a number of fundraisers
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for, for wounded warriors and, and talked to— saved a few lives
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of PTSD soldiers. Okay, just, just By being able to understand that I
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had to get those bona fides out there to simply say it's not that
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I am unaware of this cost. We lose 17 veterans a day
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to suicide, which is an astonishingly disgraceful number.
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But, but my point is, the larger point is this: war
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changes people and it should change them. It should make them
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aware of the enormity of what they've
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done. If you have— let's take a hypothetical situation.
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Where you have a highly advanced,
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technologically advanced military like the United States
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against a relatively unsophisticated one like
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the Houthis, let's say, for example. And let's say that we send drones
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over there and we don't have people making decisions about those drones.
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We just say anything that moves in this area, we just destroy it.
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Well, we, we have nothing to absolve ourselves for. We do, of course,
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because we put them there. But the temptation would be not
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only did we not pay a price for this in lives, we didn't pay a
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price for this in psychological damage. And I think the psychological
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damage that comes with victory— we all know about the psychological
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damage that comes with defeat, but the psychological— but victory has
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to come with some kind of psychological damage.
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And I would like for you personally, if you would just repeat the story you
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told us off the air about your friend who was a tank commander. Sure.
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Because this was a man who didn't have to actually do anything,
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right? But But go ahead and continue. He was a commander
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of, I think, a tank company,
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you know, US Army, NATO in the 1970s,
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you know, East Germany, West Germany, Fulda Gap,
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the, you know, the bear, the Soviet Union, all that. You know, their unit's
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motto was, our job is to fight outnumbered and win. And he's in his 70s
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now. And he says, I have to— and he never had to fire a shot
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in anger. Thanks be to God, but he was ready to.
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He oriented his whole life around that for years.
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And he said, I spent a good chunk of my life plotting
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for the destruction of property and the killing of human
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beings. And I'm still working
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that out. I still struggle with that.
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Since we're on the topic of making war antiseptic,
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I'm going to bring up original Star Trek, Bill. I don't think you'll object if
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I do that. Episode from the first
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season, episode 23, A Taste of Armageddon. The 2
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planets have been at war with each other for 500 years,
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and they've figured out that fighting with physical weapons is messy,
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so they do computer simulations, and then
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they tell each other, well, you know, our computer-simulated
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bomb killed 500 people, so you need to have 500
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people go to the extermination unit. And they would
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go back and forth. And your hero, James T. Kirk, says,
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this is monstrous. You have no incentive to stop
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the slaughter. And so he disrupts the cycle so that
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there'll be some— people will have blood on their hands, so they'll realize
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what they're doing. Is this development in technology moving
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us in the direction of that sci-fi cautionary tale?
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What a, what a wonderful example to pick. Yes, they come to
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this planet where wars are fought by computers, and then they'll say, as you said,
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well, there's been a strike on our city and we lost 600 people. And then
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600 citizens are chosen by the computer, and they willingly
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walk into disintegration units with the understanding
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that this is better than having actual cities bombed,
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because we lose the buildings and the rubble and the smell and, you know,
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and all of that. This is a cleaner way to fight a war. And,
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and you— and the argument is made that this is a much more logical way
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to fight a war because it's antiseptic. And back
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when we believed in ourselves as a culture in the 1960s,
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we were not afraid to go into a situation like that and
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say, no, we're going to turn the ship's phasers on your computers.
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Now you're going to have to fight a real war. Now instead of people cleanly
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walking into disintegration booths saying goodbye to their families and hugging
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each other and just disappearing, now you're going to have to dig through
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rubble to find bodies, and now you're going to have body parts lying
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around, and now it's going to be a messy, gory, disgusting business.
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And the more disgusting business it is, the sooner you're going to want to stop
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it. The, the point of A Taste of Armageddon was that this war was going
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on for 500 years because it was too sanitary.
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I'm virtually positive it was Robert E. Lee who said,
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it is well that war is such a terrible thing, or we would grow too
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fond of it. And it is in,
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in virtually every way the peak human existence.
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I'm not saying it's the pinnacle of human existence, right? Right. But it's the peak
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human existence in terms of what people will have
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to face during the course of a, of a young man's life.
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Your friend who is 70 years old is suffering from
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PTSD without having fired a shot.
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And I wish him peace. And, and the— I especially
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wish peace to all of the veterans that might be listening to this who have
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had actual bullets shot at them and shot back at actual people
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and in many cases killed actual people and maybe killed people that
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they didn't intend to kill. Maybe some kid was running across the street with an
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RPG and handing it to people that was going to kill his guys and they
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had to take that shot. Um, my point is not that I
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want these people to suffer. I don't want them to suffer. I certainly
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don't want them to suffer to the level that they suffer when they come back
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home and, and have no way to decompress or,
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or, or be trained out. We spend thousands of dollars to train
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people to go into the military, and we, we spend nothing on getting
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them out of the military. But with all of that said,
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there, there has to be an understanding that
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what is happening in war is repugnant and disgusting
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and needs to be ended as quickly and as bloodlessly as
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possible, which usually means as fast as possible. But,
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but the victors have to pay a price because if they don't,
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if they don't pay a price in psychological damage,
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then there is no end to war. Right.
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We all know my dad was a member of the Greatest Generation. We all
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know that the men that came back from
21:06
World War II refused to discuss World War II. This is the universal
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trope about the Greatest Generation. They never talked to
21:13
their kids. After they die, they find a case
21:16
full of, you know, Bronze Stars or Silver Stars or
21:20
awards for gallantry. Their fathers never talked
21:24
about it because it was dirty and it was ugly and it was something that
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they had to do and they didn't want to do, and they paid a big
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price for it. They watch their friends turn into pink mist.
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And if we take that away, then we're going to make
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war much, much, much easier and much quicker to
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resort to. And that is a net loss for the human species.
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Right. I think that we used to have a sense of
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that. You get glimpses of it, you know, when we have, you know, the Tomb
21:55
of the Unknown Soldier and the changing of the guard. And so on,
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the way that we bring the caskets back home. I mean, my,
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you know, my father was a World War II vet. He was in the
22:06
Navy. And when he died, you know, the Navy sent an honor guard
22:10
there that we want to have a sense, you know,
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the sacred is referred to as the fascinans et tremendum,
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you know, the fascinating and the tremendous, the terrifying,
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that there is something compelling about making
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oneself available to war. And I agree with Chesterton,
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you know, you fight not because you hate what's in front of you, it's because
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you love those who are behind you. And I think
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that there is something honorable in saying, I will
22:40
be the buffer between my loved ones and
22:44
those who would hurt my loved ones. And I think that is honorable.
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And I think we need to instill ceremony
22:51
and tradition and respect, even while
22:55
admitting we really don't want this to happen again. And if
22:59
it does happen, and even if the cause is just, it's still
23:04
tragic. But I'm going to ask a huge question and only give you 2 minutes
23:07
before the break. Part of the problem we're in right now with technology
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is we've lost our sense of wonder and
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the sacred and ritual. Is that dangerous for us as warfighters?
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You can trace the beginnings of modern war back to World War I,
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and there are many, many things about World War I, but the most important thing
23:27
about World War I germane to this discussion is World
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War I was the first time that artillery
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was used as indirect fire. And for people
23:39
who aren't military historians, what that means is this: prior to this, let's look
23:42
at the Civil War, which was only, you know, just half a century before.
23:46
You would line your cannons up on a ridge, and you would fire them,
23:49
and you could see your enemy, and you would see you're blowing holes in enemy
23:52
lines and you could see the effect that your artillery was doing.
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By the time we get to World War I, explosives have improved to the point
24:00
where guns can fire indirectly. In other words, they shoot their shells up
24:04
into the air. The people that pull the lanyard on an artillery
24:08
piece do not see where the shell falls. They have no idea. They have
24:12
spotters and balloons and aircraft and all the rest of it. And so indirect fire
24:16
was the first time that that mankind was able to kill other men in
24:19
large numbers without seeing the results of what they were doing.
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And once we got into high-altitude bombing, we began to get that as well.
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So there is something ancient and sacred about
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the fact that you have to look the person you're gonna kill in the eye,
24:35
at least, at least even if they're across the field on a battlefield.
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Once we get to World War I, that's out the window. Now it's just a
24:43
question of let's lob a million shells at this position, which was routine
24:47
towards the end of World War II. Sure, you know, across miles and
24:51
so on, you know, you just kind of pull the trigger and you know it
24:54
went somewhere, but you didn't know where. And then
24:58
when you were on the receiving end, you said, who the heck is shooting at
25:01
me? I've never done anything to him before. Friends, when we come back, we're going
25:05
to continue our conversation with Bill Whittle. You can find his very good work on
25:09
political, social, cultural commentary at billwhittle.com.
25:14
We're talking about dehumanizing the modern battlefield.
25:17
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thestationofthecross.com. Here on The Catholic Current, we engage issues seriously
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and faithfully, and that intellectual freedom exists because we are listener-funded.
26:49
Support us at thestationofthecross.com. Friends, I'm talking with Bill
26:53
Whittle. You can find his very good work at billwhittle.com. We're talking
26:57
about dehumanizing the modern battlefield. Bill, I think
27:02
we can agree if we let the machines take over war, that's going to be—
27:06
future generations will curse us if we allow this to happen.
27:10
And I think one of the reasons why we're predisposed to
27:14
something so dehumanizing is because for decades,
27:18
certainly in my lifetime, we've been letting go of
27:21
what is distinctively human,
27:25
and that includes ritual and reverence
27:29
and being able to look people in the eye. And part of
27:33
the challenge that we've had really since the advent of radio and the telegraph is
27:37
we have news of horrors so far away
27:42
and we don't know where to put them. I mean, if your neighbor's house burns
27:45
down, that's different from, you know, there's a fire right
27:49
now as we speak in a forest in Spain. That you and
27:53
I can't do anything about, and we don't know anyone there. So, I was thinking
27:57
about how being flooded with news of horror and then
28:01
going on as if it didn't happen, even that is dehumanizing. So,
28:04
I found a poem written by an American journalist.
28:08
His name is Robert D. Abrams, and it
28:12
was called The Night They Burned Shanghai. And he tells a story about a
28:16
couple going off near Philadelphia to play bridge for the evening,
28:20
and he knows that the Japanese are slaughtering everyone
28:24
in Shanghai, and that's not going to affect him in
28:28
the least. It won't change his evening's social plans.
28:32
And the last 2 stanzas land hard, and I'd like your take on that.
28:36
He says, tonight Shanghai is burning and we are dying
28:40
too. What bomb more surely mortal than death inside
28:44
of you? For some men die by shrapnel and some go
28:48
down in flames. But most men perish
28:52
inch by inch and play at little games.
28:56
But if we reduce war to not even
29:00
a video game, just something the machines do
29:04
in the background, that takes away part
29:08
of our soul, doesn't it? Isn't that something we should be
29:11
alarmed about? And I think we're predisposed to go down
29:15
this terrible dark road. Do you see it too, or am I just being a
29:19
dark-brooding melancholic Irishman again? Well,
29:23
yes, what that poem refers to is the fact that
29:27
by pretending that these horrors don't exist at all,
29:32
we kill ourselves a little bit because we anesthetize ourselves,
29:35
and it's probably better to say almost lobotomize ourselves.
29:39
We permanently take human suffering off the
29:42
table and pretend it's not there. Now, to be fair to the
29:46
flip side of the argument, people have a zone of concern
29:50
and they have a zone of control. There are things that they worry about,
29:53
and then there are things that they can do something about. And war in
29:57
an East Asian country is beyond our zone of control.
30:01
And if it's beyond your zone of control, but your
30:05
zone of concern extends to it to the degree that you can't put it
30:08
down, you'll drive yourself insane. There's— I've
30:12
known a few people who are so paralyzed by all the injustice
30:16
in the world that they can't live their lives. And when you have a
30:19
worldwide network, it's not your friends anymore.
30:23
It's people that— this is going on all the
30:27
time. There are catastrophes every day. That doesn't make them less catastrophic,
30:30
but it does mean if you don't have some kind of filter on
30:34
your mind, you're going to go barking mad. But back to the
30:39
mechanized battlefield. Let me rephrase that. We've had a mechanized battlefield for a long
30:42
time. The autonomous battlefield. Um, one of
30:46
the things that it removes is one of the most precious human qualities of
30:51
all, and, and you could make a strong case that it is the most
30:55
noble of the virtues, and that is, uh, the quality of mercy.
31:00
Um, these machines do not show mercy because
31:03
they have no, uh, they have no remorse, they have no,
31:07
uh, particular resentment or hostility. That's— it's a program,
31:10
they follow the program, and, and there's no mercy. In World War I, there was
31:15
a famous Christmas truce where the soldiers were close together so
31:18
that they got out and played soccer and they exchanged hats
31:22
and they exchanged newspapers and they clapped each other on the shoulders and realized
31:25
that neither side of these regular people wanted to be there.
31:29
It was just an enormous inbred family fight that chewed up,
31:33
you know, millions and millions of the best young men of their generation.
31:37
During the Civil War, there were cases where the lines were so close together that
31:40
one band on the Confederate side would strike up a tune and then the American
31:45
band would strike up a tune and then the Confederates would play Dixie and the
31:48
Americans would play the flag of freedom and the
31:52
battle cry of freedom. And they would just realize that
31:56
they're just regular people who have really nothing
31:59
against each other that are out there for political reasons that really have nothing
32:03
to do with them. The reason we're having this conversation right
32:07
now is because of the fundamental humanity of
32:11
2 men who were built into a machine-like
32:15
command structure, and that was the Soviet Union. It's important for people to
32:18
understand that the is that during the Cold War, the Soviets had a policy
32:23
that removed all responsibility from the local commander.
32:27
It was— their policy was very simple: if A, then B,
32:31
period. If this happens, then you must do this,
32:35
period. There is no room for your individual judgment and
32:39
so on. I'll try to make this very brief. During the Cuban Missile Crisis,
32:43
there was a squadron of 3 conventional Soviet submarines,
32:46
and each one of them had a nuclear-tipped torpedo. As the conflict
32:50
was being resolved diplomatically, diplomatically, the United States had detected these submarines
32:54
and we dropped training depth charges to get the subs to surface
32:59
so they could get the news that the conflict was over. Training depth charge is
33:02
something that you drop, but it's got, instead of a huge explosive, it's just got
33:05
a hand grenade in it. It just goes pop, right? It's just, it's just a
33:08
pop, just to let them know that it's there. Well, it turns out the
33:12
Russians didn't know that we had training depth charges, so they
33:16
thought that they were under depth charge attack. And in order to fire the one
33:20
nuclear-tipped torpedo that each one of these subs carried required
33:25
the authorization of the captain and the executive officer,
33:28
who was a political officer. This one ship was getting ready to launch a
33:31
nuclear-tipped torpedo at an American destroyer at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
33:36
And by sheer coincidence, one out of 3 choice, the captain
33:40
of the flotilla of the 3 subs happened to be on board that particular
33:44
boat. And he said no. And pistols were drawn and threats were made
33:48
and people had guns pointed at their heads. And the captain of the flotilla said,
33:51
no, we are not launching this nuclear-tipped torpedo until we get an
33:55
absolute confirmation that this war has started. Well, if he
33:59
hadn't been on that boat, that submarine would have launched a nuclear-tipped torpedo and
34:03
nuked an American destroyer in the middle of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
34:06
And that probably would have done it. Many years later, in 1987,
34:11
I'm embarrassed I'm genuinely embarrassed that I do not remember these 2 men's
34:15
names. I used to. There was a Soviet missile commander who
34:18
was in charge of an entire missile wing, and he
34:22
saw on his radar scopes a first decapitation strike coming in from the
34:26
United States, incoming warheads coming from the US,
34:29
multiple reentry vehicles. And he had orders,
34:33
as did the other guy, if A, then B. If you're attacked by an American
34:36
destroyer, launch a nuclear torpedo. If you see incoming warheads,
34:40
launch a full-scale thermonuclear counterattack against United States.
34:45
And this man said no. Now, if he had been wrong, he would
34:49
have been executed, his family would have been executed. There would have been probably not
34:52
much left to execute by the time it was all over. But he said no,
34:55
I don't believe it, I don't believe it. In both those cases,
34:59
the humanity, the fundamental humanity of these 2 Russian
35:03
commanders prevented World War III.
35:07
And we're only here because of the, the fundamental
35:12
human belief that I don't believe
35:15
that this is possible. Machines don't have that instinct.
35:19
They don't have that biological revulsion.
35:24
If this had been run by computers at the time,
35:28
we would have had 2 examples of full-scale thermonuclear
35:31
war between the US and the Soviet Union. World War III was averted both times
35:36
by the humanity of the people involved. And if you take that out
35:40
of the equation, you also set yourself up for enormous, enormous trouble.
35:44
Right. I think there's— yes, there was— oh
35:48
gosh, it was a novel that came out in the early '60s and there was
35:51
a movie. It was black and white and I thought it was an amazing thing
35:55
when I was a kid that there were black and white movies. But it was
35:58
called Failsafe and one of the computers
36:02
had a glitch. Yeah, it's a good novel.
36:05
It's an amazing movie. You know, a computer had a glitch. And then
36:09
the other computers convinced the other computers to
36:14
send missiles over to the Soviet Union
36:17
and the Soviet Union said, well, you know, we're gonna end the world because you
36:21
started it. Well, no, it was a computer error. And spoiler alert,
36:25
I think the US president agreed to have
36:29
New York City bombed by the Soviets and then stop
36:32
it there to prove this was really an accident.
36:36
And, you know, and that was— gosh, that was in the early '60s
36:41
that that came out. So things like this have been around
36:45
for a while. You know, speaking as a priest, I take
36:49
human life very seriously. I really do hold
36:54
it sacred. I have reverence for sacrifice
36:57
and those who are ready to sacrifice. I think it was Churchill said,
37:01
They also serve who stand and wait. So if you put on the uniform and
37:05
you didn't fire a shot, you still did something
37:09
that most people are not capable of doing. So whenever I see
37:12
anybody in uniform or I see a vet, I always say,
37:17
thank you for your service. So, but we've got about 3 minutes left in this
37:21
segment. How do we convince people to dial it back? How do we
37:25
tell them we don't want to go down this road? Well, the United States
37:29
of America is a— is an exceptional country in, in so
37:33
many ways that it's almost hard to measure. But one of the qualities of the
37:37
United States soldier and the United States military, and, and is
37:41
part of their training, is that, that the U.S.
37:44
soldier and sailor, Marine and airman and so on,
37:48
um, are, are instructed that if they receive
37:52
an order that they believe to be immoral, they are not not required to obey
37:56
that order. In fact, they're required to stand up for it. If some general
38:00
orders a sergeant to gun down a bunch of civilians
38:03
who are standing up against the wall, the sergeant not only has the authority
38:07
to disobey that order, he has an obligation to disobey that order.
38:11
That is an extraordinary aspect of any country's
38:15
military. There have been obviously exceptions when Americans
38:19
have gone off the rails. The My Lai Massacre was a great example of that,
38:23
but the My Lai Massacre was ended by a helicopter pilot
38:27
who put himself between Lieutenant William Calley's squad and,
38:31
and what was left of the Vietnamese that they were just gunning down in a
38:35
pit. But, but just because some individuals break down and lose their mind doesn't
38:39
mean that the institution is corrupt. He was prosecuted for that.
38:43
It was considered a war crime. But the Nazis, on the other hand,
38:47
would give out orders to simply go into Ukraine or go into Russia and destroy
38:51
entire villages, murder everybody, lock everybody up in the church and set it on fire.
38:55
And if you think that these 2 systems are equivalent,
38:58
then there's something fundamentally wrong with you, really something fundamentally
39:02
wrong with you. So, so the way we dial it back is we,
39:06
we make it clear to our military servicemen that are all volunteers
39:10
that this is serious business. I was very, very fortunate
39:14
to have been invited to CENTCOM during the Obama administration,
39:18
and after They sterilized the screen so that there was no top-secret
39:22
information in there. I got to sit in CENTCOM, and there's a young— there's a
39:26
woman major, and she's just opening a Tupperware thing of chicken salad, and she's
39:30
having lunch. But these guys are launching drone strikes on terrorists,
39:34
and they said the hardest part for them was to have the
39:39
surveillance over a village and watching these Islamist
39:43
monsters raping or beheading people and not be able to do
39:46
anything about it. But what they needed to do in order to launch
39:49
that drone strike was they had to be sure the target was identified. They had
39:53
to be sure there was no collateral damage. A full-star general had to
39:57
authorize every single missile that came off of the rails of one
40:01
of those drones. And that kind of human link
40:05
is what protects us from becoming autonomous killing
40:09
robots. That's— and that's something I want to talk about in the next segment,
40:13
that ultimately this really is Uh, we're trying
40:16
to achieve not just efficiency but humanity. Friends,
40:19
we come back and continue our conversation with Bill Whittle. You can find his excellent
40:23
work at billwhittle.com. We're talking about dehumanizing the modern
40:26
battlefield. Be part of the conversation. Follow what we're following by
40:31
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40:42
Let's do this good work together. Let's be more than merely relevant.
40:45
Back in 2 minutes. Please do stay with us.
41:01
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41:13
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41:21
Praise be Jesus Christ. This is Father Robert McTagg of the Society of Jesus,
41:24
your daily host for The Catholic Current, where we bring Christ to the world
41:28
and the world to Christ. You're listening to us from the Station of the Cross
41:30
studios, your local radio radio station and the iCatholic Radio mobile
41:34
app, where we proclaim the fullness of truth with clarity and charity.
41:38
Hey friends, I've been talking to Bill Whittle. You can find his excellent
41:41
commentary on billwhittle.com. We're talking about dehumanizing
41:45
the modern battlefield. Bill, we've been talking about technology
41:49
changing the way that we fight war, how we, we perceive
41:54
life and death and killing and so on. And there is a danger
41:59
of the machines making killing too easy
42:03
and hiding from us what's actually taking place.
42:07
And I bring to mind a former student of mine I taught years ago.
42:11
He was— gosh, he was a big guy. He was built. But he was
42:15
a sniper for the Army Rangers, and he was in
42:20
Iraq, you know, the second time we went in, and he'd been through
42:23
hell and back. And so now he's 24, 25 years old,
42:28
and he's in a freshman Western civilization class, and he's
42:32
reading Homer's Odyssey with
42:35
young guys who wear their hats on backwards, never heard a shot fired
42:39
in anger, never threw a punch, never took a punch. And these
42:43
young kids are laughing at the
42:47
very idea that men could cry over
42:51
the loss of friends. And I shuddered,
42:55
and I said, well, he's not in handcuffs. So I said, well, did you do?
42:57
And he goes, well, I had to get up and walk out because I didn't
43:01
want to end up in jail because I did do that,
43:04
and I caused other people to cry over their friends when
43:08
I killed them. So I think there's something lost
43:13
in not even letting war become a video
43:17
game, but just an abstraction.
43:21
I'm afraid of the path that we're going on. What are your thoughts about this,
43:24
please? Well, we've had an all-voluntary military for quite
43:29
a long time now, until short— not too long after Vietnam. And I
43:33
do not want to go back to a draft under any circumstances. That was a
43:36
catastrophe in Vietnam. And, and there is a moral
43:40
clarity that comes from going to war with volunteers that
43:45
I think is, is very, very important for a democracy.
43:49
But, um, when you when you reach a point
43:53
where your life is so insulated from the realities of
43:57
what life actually is, if you can't cry over the loss of a friend,
44:01
then there's something wrong with you. They can't— they have 2,000
44:05
friends on Facebook, they have no real friends, right? That is
44:09
part of the disconnect of humanity that's happening because of social media
44:13
and experiencing everything through this little thing that we
44:16
hold in our hands. But I, I wish that the, the gentleman
44:21
in, in question— and I, I feel, I, I really feel his pain.
44:25
I don't pretend to understand it exactly, but I, I certainly can get the
44:29
shadow of it against the wall. Um, I wish he had had
44:33
a chance to talk to those kids and tell them that this guy had pulled
44:38
him out of fire and had saved him, saved his life, everything.
44:42
And then watching his friend die and in combat was just
44:45
overwhelming. I remember when Saving Private Ryan came out,
44:49
there's a scene where the typist is supposed to carry
44:53
ammunition up the stairs where there's a hand-to-hand fight,
44:56
and the German soldier comes down, he's just killed
45:00
this American, and he's going up the stairs and they just pass each other because
45:04
they got nothing else to say and nothing else to do.
45:06
And the young typist guy is just paralyzed
45:10
by fear And, and everybody in the audience was just,
45:13
just booing. Look, come on, you coward! You know, what's the matter with you,
45:17
you coward? You should have just run. You weren't there, man.
45:21
You know, you're, you're not there, and you will never know unless
45:24
you are there. My great fear is, uh,
45:28
is not being able to act when I need to. I'm, I'm afraid of being
45:32
afraid. So far so good. I've had a number of emergencies
45:36
that I've, that I've dealt with. I thought pretty, pretty well.
45:39
And I've actually made an effort to desensitize myself to some of the sights that
45:43
these people see so that if I ever do get into a situation where there's
45:47
a mass casualty event, I can do some good. But nobody knows
45:51
how they're going to behave until, until the shots are
45:55
actually being fired. And that, and that insipid
45:59
sort of mocking kind of thing really does
46:03
need to be slapped out of people.
46:08
It shows how dehumanized these kids are,
46:12
that they can't even connect to it, that the whole idea
46:16
is ludicrous to them. It's a,
46:19
it's a big warning sign, Father. And I think
46:23
that the best thing possible in that particular situation
46:27
would have been for the teacher to let this man sit there and talk to
46:31
them for 45 minutes and tell them what actually happened in graphic
46:36
detail of what happened to those friends and
46:40
teach these kids a bit of a lesson that they sorely need.
46:43
Right. Part of reading great literature
46:47
is to expand your moral imagination,
46:51
to give you windows into worlds you might not
46:55
otherwise have seen, to cultivate empathy,
46:59
to put yourself in another's place.
47:03
And I have to believe that whatever those kids did with their
47:06
time before they got to, uh, that college
47:10
class, I'm willing to bet that they didn't spend
47:14
much of that time reading great literature.
47:17
What do you think? I think you're absolutely right. One of
47:20
the problems is that in the young people, young men play a lot
47:24
of war games, and when they get shot, they immediately respawn,
47:28
is the They just immediately resurrected back on the battlefield
47:32
and go back in, they get shot, and so on. I think they should all
47:35
be forced to play a game where there's no respawn. You get hit, you're killed,
47:38
you're out for the game. You just have to sit there for 40 minutes and
47:41
watch other people play. They would play very differently. But no, what you're
47:44
talking about with literature is correct. I grew up at a time when the Vietnam
47:49
War was— the Vietnam War ended when I was 14,
47:53
so I was getting I mean, you know, I was thinking about the
47:57
draft and I read The Red Badge of Courage and
48:02
I thought, I seriously questioned, would I be
48:06
able to go through this? Well, you're gonna have to, Bill.
48:09
You know, you don't have a choice about this. You don't have to,
48:13
you can't sit there and say, well, no, I just don't feel like going.
48:16
You're going. And never facing that
48:20
reality is is very destructive for men because
48:24
once you can come to a level of acceptance that you would be willing to
48:28
do this, that you'd be willing to go and do your duty, you become
48:31
a man on a level that you don't become otherwise.
48:36
I signed up for the military after 9/11 and they told me they didn't need
48:40
any 40-year-olds, but they'd give me a call if they did.
48:45
And I spent 12 years trying to get into the Air Force Academy.
48:48
So I was, I was more than ready to go. But the
48:52
war is, is, is the most profane and sacred thing that
48:57
humans do, period. It's profane because of
49:01
the blood, the murder, the loss, the grief, the terror,
49:06
the damages, loss of limbs, the wounds, the blinding, the psychological
49:11
damage that never heals. It is an awful, awful,
49:14
awful awful, awful thing. And because we have
49:18
to be willing to do it sometimes to defend what we love and what we
49:21
believe in, that also makes it one of the most
49:24
sacred things that we do. Right. It's because
49:28
human life is precious— I'm sorry, but we're just coming up on a break.
49:32
Because life is precious, we're made in the image and likeness of God,
49:36
war cannot be a game, and it shouldn't be
49:40
dealt with irreverently. Bill Whittle of BillWhittle.com,
49:43
thank you for a fascinating conversation. I have so much respect for
49:47
your work and your integrity, and I do hope we can talk again before
49:51
long. Me too, Father. Me as well. I'm Jesuit Father Robert McTeague,
49:54
your host every day at The Catholic Current. Join us tomorrow. It's Friday,
49:58
and you know what that means. Let's talk about this. We'll walk through a complex
50:01
issue together. I'm gonna be going into part 4 of
50:06
our ongoing series called Novel Prophecies, looking at
50:10
Catholic apocalyptic literature as a way of understanding
50:13
our own times. Last Friday we read through Robert Hugh Benson's
50:18
Lord of the World. There is a sequel called The Dawn
50:21
of All. We're going to be going through that tomorrow. After the broadcast
50:26
today, go to thestationofthecross.com, get our resources list,
50:29
download our audio as podcasts, take us to your friends.
50:32
Together we'll take it to the whole world. Through the intercession of Our Lady of
50:35
Mount Carmel, may almighty God bless you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Go in
50:40
peace, and please do pray for me, for I am a sinner.