# "Kicking butt is mandatory. Taking names is optional."

- Author: Joichi Ito
- Date: 2004-05-05T20:00:19Z


John Perry Barlow"Kicking butt is mandatory. Taking names is optional."

So runs the headline on a current U.S. Navy recruiting ad. This may sum up current U.S. military philosophy pretty neatly, whatever the branch of service. No one from the Pentagon knows, or seems particularly interested in finding out, how many civilians we have killed in Iraq so far. I would guess it exceeds many times over the number who died here on September 11. One of the liabilities of conducting a military operation that is so heavily based on "death from above" is that, even with our surgical new targeting abilities, we are dangerously abstracted from the consequences below. Barlow rants about the situation in Iraq.





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