The strategic shielding of most voters from any emotional or financial sacrifice for these wars cannot but trigger the analogue of what is called "moral hazard" in the context of health insurance, a field in which I've done a lot of scholarly work. There, moral hazard refers to the tendency of well-insured patients to use health care with complete indifference to the cost they visit on others. ----- But if all but a handful of Americans are completely insulated against the emotional -- and financial -- cost of war, is it not natural to suspect moral hazard will be at work in that context as well?

Who's Paying for Our Patriotism?
By Uwe E. Reinhardt
Washington Post, Monday, August 1, 2005; Page A17
http://snipurl.com/gn38

Noncombatants enjoying the fruits
(Most often the guys in the suits)
Of missing the war
Think war is a bore.
A "moral hazard" which breeds only brutes.

BTW this issue is explored in the new movie "Stealth" in which a robotic Stealth bomber is insensitive to the risks of "collateral damage" when targeting an enemy position. Unlike the other members of the Stealth team, it doesn't have any blood in its veins [what Shakespeare called "the milk of human kindness"].

"What we don't know, can't hurt us" is not an aphorism. It's a defence mechanism.

What we don't know can hurt us, of course.

Worse, it can brutalize us.