US-Israel War Against Iran Played Like a Video Game, Warns FABC Vice President

Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David, Vice President of the Federation of Asian Bishops Conferences (FABC),  has warned that modern warfare risks becoming dangerously detached from human reality, as missiles and drones continue to fly across the Middle East. 

The reflection came days after the United States and Israel launched coordinated strikes against Iran on February 28, triggering a wave of missile and drone retaliation across the region. 

Cardinal David said the growing reliance on drones, satellites and artificial intelligence in modern warfare risks creating a dangerous illusion that war can be conducted with precision and control. 

Behind the screens and algorithms, he said, are real communities where missiles strike homes, hospitals and crowded streets, leaving civilians to bear the consequences of decisions made far away and in air-conditioned rooms.

“The terrible illusion of this kind of warfare is that it feels clean and clinical,” Cardinal David wrote in a Facebook post. “From distant command centers, military operators stare at screens where maps, radar signals and algorithm-generated targets move like icons in a computer game. A cursor moves. A coordinate is selected. A click is made. And a missile is launched.”

But the screen does not show what happens when the missile lands, he added, noting that the casualties are not symbols on a map but civilians, families, children and elderly people caught in the blast.

Cardinal David, who shepherds the diocese of Kalookan in Metro Manila, Philippines,  also warned that the widening conflict could place millions of migrant workers in danger across the Gulf region. 

Among them are thousands of Filipinos working in homes, hospitals, hotels and construction sites, as well as Filipino seafarers crewing vessels that pass through the strategic Strait of Hormuz. 

If the vital shipping corridor becomes a war zone, he said, these workers could find themselves on the front lines of a conflict far from home.

Some readers responding to Cardinal David’s Facebook post echoed the concern. 

One commenter wrote that the destruction caused by war threatens human existence itself and expressed hope that world leaders would awaken to the consequences of their actions and choose peace.

Another commenter said they were praying “for sanity for those directly managing this war” and asked God to raise up “good architects of peace and love,” thanking Cardinal David for his reflection.

The tragedy of war, Cardinal David wrote, is not only the destruction it leaves behind but the frightening ease with which it can be started. 

As missiles and drones are launched with the push of a button from distant command centers, he asked how long humanity will continue to tolerate wars begun with such casual ease by leaders who rarely see the human cost of their decisions.