“Pilots” at the base are slated to take part in the arm-chair, video-game-like, remote control, computer-screen, cowardly, “bug-splat” killing of faraway folks whom they are told might be, or might become, or might be thinking of becoming “terrorists.” (7 minutes)
Ray quotes from a 1961 Thomas Merton poem, “Chant to Be Used in Processions Around a Site with Furnaces.” It is actually an anti-poem spoken by the Commandant of a Nazi death camp who, after proceeding matter-of-factly through his daily routine of genocide, concludes with this admonition:
“Do not think yourselves better because you burn up friends and enemies with long-range missiles without ever seeing what you have done.”