Along with persuading President Obama to withhold photos documenting fog-of-war brutalities at Afghanistan and Iraq prisons, the Pentagon is seeking an opiate to placate the war-averse populace. What better anodyne than a marketing campaign implying wars are fun video games?

As the armed forces build more unmanned drones, recruiters are looking to add new remote pilots. It is science fiction to assert that “the frontlines are unmanned.” Claims like that are deeply destructive, beyond their obvious insult to the thousands killed, wounded and/or currently stationed on those very frontlines.

By convincing us that violence can be just another innocuous expression of adolescent technophilia, we will have once again forgotten that all wars, even the justifiable ones, are lamentable human tragedies.