Since the start of World War I, pilots of attack aircraft have put themselves in harm's way along with their aircraft.

That is very quickly changing.

More and more, while the aircraft attacks the target, the pilot sits safely in a comfy chair state-side.

Both the enemy and international human rights organizations have cried "foul."

I find myself somewhere in the middle, following the treachery of 9/11, where hundreds of non-combatants were murdered by the hijackers.

In any case, I think there needs to be a song, about the "fighter pilot" who never puts his body in harm's way, only a remote killing machine. It has to express the essential contradiction between sending this killing machine against evil, with no mother's son on the side of right at risk and the impersonal and certain destruction of other mother's sons (and mothers).

(Full disclosure: I'm an airplane pilot and a damned good one, and if I were of a sufficiently youthful age, I'd be in one of those remote seats, following orders and flying missions. Indeed, I think that before too long the Air Force will perhaps be looking for us old stick-and-rudder guys to do what has to be done.)

But then there's this whole killing by remote-control thing to deal with.

There's got to be a song in it.