“TECHNOLOGICAL progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards,” argued Aldous Huxley in typical dystopian fashion. With military technology he has a point: can we really describe a technology that kills people more efficiently as progress? Throw in the fog of war and political spin, and deciding the moral value of such technology becomes an incredibly complex problem.
The present war in Iraq was supposed to be different: a high-tech war in which smart bombs and missiles would minimise “collateral damage”. The logic was spelled out at the start of the war in Â鶹´«Ã½ (22…
