As long as you accept this as "reality", it will be. Who says so? Where is the natural law that forces us to fight in some godforsaken desert, jungle or whatever when there is no enemy that can be defeated in open battle (or commando raids, or smart bombing some third world country) and when any reasonable objective has been the first casualty in the field. So maybe it sounds naive and "not-of-this-world" but if we do not start walking down this road, it will never happen. Free will and the ability to use it intelligently is maybe the only think that makes us special on this rock. "That's the way it always has been" is not an argument, it is the acceptance of defeat, it is the denial of the ability to change and lastly: free will itself. I would never deny that byproducts of military research are sometimes (many times) useful, beneficial, even groundbreaking. But just imagine for a moment that the same effort had been used on the byproduct and not on the actual product. BTW: I have a masters degree in history and not a bad one either, so I am well aware that our past record is a sad one. But nobody is past redemption :-).
