Welcome...and initial guidelines...

This blog will be used in the spring of 2008 by 80+ students at Drexel University to investigate the effects of Iraq on culture and the reverse. Our goal will be to better understand why the US is in Iraq, and to question whether literature can help us on this journey.

Weekly plans and other materials will always be posted in Vista, not this blog. So go to Bb Vista to get the discussion prompts and other instructions.

I intend this blog to manage our discussions and track our collective investigation.

You should have received an email from me inviting you to become a contributor to this blog. The email was sent Monday afternoon to your official Drexel email address.

Monday, April 14, 2008

New Drexel Major: War Engineers

Totally kidding about the title, but anyway, the military using engineers to figure out how to effectively kill the enemy without hurting civilians.  Well, you can not compare todays war with the US bombing Japanese cities.  Back then there was a clear cut line as to who the enemy was and where they lived.  We were also involved in the war in Europe and to fight a full out war against Japan, it was estimated that it would consume a few hundred thousand more american lives so, we decided to bomb their cities (nukes).  America did this not because they wanted to, but as a way to save american lives.  Today, war is a personal thing for everyone because everyone knows everything that goes right and wrong everyday on the other side of the world.  America knows how many civilians were killed and how many soldiers were killed every day, in what city, and how they died.   Therefore, the american government and military has to be careful not to kill civilians when attacking the enemy.  So, who better to help the military kill carefully then engineers.  For example there are bullets that will explode in mid air inside of a room so it will only kill the occupants in that room and if there are civilians in the room next door, they will not be harmed.

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