Memorials as safety guard
On FPV drones, conflict overseas, and why Memorial Day will always matter
The more video-game-like that people attempt to make the conduct of warfare, the more we need the solemnity of Memorial Day to jar us back to recognizing the awful human toll invariably associated with warfare. First-person drone footage, sizzle reels cut straight from the front lines, and recruitment ads that appeal to violence rather than to peace all conspire to make the realities seem mainly trivial.
■ Automating the battlefield in Ukraine has transformed expectations of how the next wars will be fought. But it hasn’t diminished the real peril to the people in the uniforms of both the aggressor (Russia) and the defender (Ukraine). Their death and injury counts are astonishing.
■ We need a holiday like Memorial Day not just to remind us of the fitting tributes we owe to those who died in war, but equally to compel us to think about alternatives to open combat. Conflicts will never go away, but how we solve them without resorting to bloodshed is a matter worth a considerable amount of energy and resources. Memorial Day acknowledges when that couldn’t be done before, but now and always we have a perpetual obligation to seek ways to keep young lives intact.