The military does in fact "kill people & break stuff" and I understand the need to minimize casualties in any war but the main priority is to protect our own. Regular police have a duty to protect and serve the citizens, the military does not.Lothar wrote:People are overlooking the opinion I've put forward: non-lethal weapons that don't do any permanent harm are good in both domestic and military settings. Despite what Diedel and others have said, the goal of our military is not always to kill enemy troops or to injure them so they burden their society. A doctrine of true modern American warfare is: take out enemy leaders and those who fight against you because they hate you, but minimize casualties among those who fight against you because it's their job. Such people will (for the most part) make it easier for you to rebuild their country because they'll be able to be productive citizens of your replacement government.
I fully get what you are saying. Minimizing casualties and injuries on the enemies side will lessen the financial burden on us when it comes to rebuilding, however, with that being said, I do not think that that should be the primary duty of our soldiers nor should they be burdened with that responsibility while they are attempting to rout the enemy from it's positions.
In a postwar situation involving police -or- in a domestic setting, I think weapons that can incapacitate without doing harm would be an enormous benefit and I see no problem with equipping police with such devices as killing a suspect who has not yet been proven guilty is contrary to our very system. If there is a way to merely incapacitate them while still protecting the police doing their jobs, then that would by all means be the best system.
And finally, I don't really understand how incapacitating an enemy soldier through injury is somehow worse than killing them. Yes, in some cases, they would be better off dead, but there are many weapons already that do this. In any war, the injuries outweigh the dead and some of these injuries are quite severe. I would rather have a spot on my retina than unable to walk. I'd rather be deaf than dead, and while these solutions are not the greatest in that they still cause harm, they are better than death. When the military is equipped with Star Trek like weapons with "Stun" settings, then yeah, we'll have found the perfect weapon but until then, I think progress is being made.