SHOOT TO KILL?

Beyond the Rubber Bullet (Lev Grossman, 7/21/02, Time)

The U.S. armed forces don't do much shooting anymore. Even in Afghanistan, they engage in more advising and guiding than gunplay. Soldiers today are asked more often to keep the peace or defuse demonstrations, and the last thing they want in those situations is to fire a lethal weapon. That's why the Pentagon is spending more and more research-and-development dollars on weapons that stun, scare, entangle or nauseate--anything but kill.

The U.S.'s nonlethal-weapons programs are drawing their own fire, mostly from human-rights activists who contend that the technologies being developed will be deployed to suppress dissent and that they defy international weapons treaties. Through public websites, interviews with defense researchers and data obtained in a series of Freedom of Information Act requests filed by watchdog groups, TIME has managed to peer into the Pentagon's multimillion-dollar program and piece together this glimpse of the gentler, though not necessarily kinder, arsenal of tomorrow.

Because of my personal experiences with the issue, Orrin requested that I weigh in on this one. While I'm not an expert in military affairs, my opinion is informed by several years of military service as an infantry officer. When I was deployed in Bosnia, as a Public Affairs officer, US soldiers were involved in several confrontations with angry mobs of Bosnian Serbs (most of them paid to turn out for the protests.)
Posted by Stephen Judd at July 23, 2002 4:51 AM