From Frank Spence
You reported concerns about the potential use of advances in neuroscience by the military in “Mind wars of the future” (11 February, p 6). The story began: “Wars of the future may be decided through the manipulation of people’s minds.” When was a war fought without manipulating minds? Normal, sane, healthy people do not kill each other: they only do so when they have been brainwashed by propaganda to behave like psychopaths.
It added that technology or chemicals that interfere with thought processes carry “the threat of indiscriminate killing”. Have you not heard of the British and US bombing of Dresden in 1945, the US bombing of south-east Asia between 1960 and 1975, the destruction of Fallujah, Iraq, by British and US forces in 2004, the Israeli attack on Gaza in 2008-2009 or the Nato strikes on Libya in 2011? Has any war been fought in the past 50 years that did not involve indiscriminate killing?
From John McCallum
Talking about mind control in warfare reminded me of a cartoon by Australian Patrick Cook. It shows two lines of trenches. In the distance, enemy soldiers hold up a huge sign which says: “Your mother never really loved you”. In the foreground an anxious soldier turns to his companion and says: “So this is total war”.
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