You're right, Jordan. The pilots on the tape are just doing their job, with job number one being getting out alive. I agree that my use of the term "traditional combat" was wrong; the term means nothing. Plenty of fighting in the past was also done in the detached, clinical way shown on the tape and had the same -- yes, chilling -- combination of being highly personalized and depersonalized. Being a machine gunner on the Western Front in WWI is one example that comes to mind -- you could see the people you were destroying right in front of you as individuals, yet your job was just the boring, factory-like, routine task of sweeping the gun back and forth with a regular rhythm.
Carl
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