Trigger Happy
392
Earlier, I described the way in which a videogame
such as Time Crisis enables you to simulate the form of
killing while being happily dissociated from the
morality of the acts represented, because there is no
actual killing going on. This in itself is an innocent
phenomenon with respectable sporting forebears. But in
the specific military context, it becomes a real danger.
For modern hi-tech wars are increasingly fought and
seen through videogame-type graphic systems. One has
only to think of the disturbingly gleeful American
generals of Desert Storm showing off their smart-
missile videotapes, or of the television commentators
on the bombing of Belgrade cooing over grainy film
images of tracer bullets and explosions— for all the
world as if they were watching fireworks and no one
was actually dying.
Military aircraft and tanks used by NATO now
have weapons of such range that it is not at all usual to
make direct visual identification of a target; instead,
icons are tracked on computerized displays and
weapons are locked automatically. Since attacks in
Desert Storm and Serbia were fought at the greatest
distance possible in order to minimize American
casualties, these procedures directly caused numerous
widely reported instances of friendly fire: Allied tanks
