As you point out, the US has been involved in various forms of shooting wars on pretty much a perpetual basis for at least the last 60 years. Not just the hot wars of WWII, Korea etc, but also the dirty wars where "advisers", both official and shadowy, would find themselves involved at the sharp end.

The British call it "gunboat diplomacy", but I think everyone knows that the 800-odd military bases scattered around the globe aren't just for sightseeing.

The US is, to outside eyes at least, an excessively militarised society. It may not rise to the laughably homo-erotic military fetishism of a N Korea or Soviet Union, but rather assigns to itself a "duty" of protecting the world from threats to the peaceful status quo. A status quo which has evolved over time to align with the economic well being of Corporate America. It is impossible now to imagine the US going to war where Government policy and Corporate advantage are not inextricably interdependent.

This has lead to it throwing its weight around the world on a perpetual basis. And those soldiers involved go home on leave, or finish their tour and head back to civvie street.

From all these wars there must now be an accumulation of tens of millions of people walking around with various levels of PTSD; some diagnosed but most are not. And all of them projecting their damage onto the society around them. Relatively few end up in homeless shelters while, conversely, one or two make it to the Senate. But they are there all the same.

A few drone pilots won't make any material difference to the carnage already in existence. It isn't the method of war that creates the harm, it's the belief that war is justifiable.

War isn't an extension of foreign policy, it's a failure of foreign policy. War shouldn't be easy, it shouldn't be painless. it's supposed to be hard and it's supposed to hurt to remind us why we shouldn't do it. The drones are just another step to making war easy, but the more the hurt is hidden, the deeper the wound

keep to the Fen Causeway