@ehBeth,
No, thank goodness, I have not been personally closer to war than my father who saw combat in Korea, an uncle who stormed the beach at Normandy and lost half his leg, friends who saw combat in Vietnam, and nephews who have seen combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I certainly don't have a romantic notion of war and agree, entirely, that it is truly horrible.
I don't, however, need to have seen combat to know that war, for the foreseeable, future is here to stay, because so is individuals' sick lust for power.
Remove the latter, and it is very likely we would never see another war, but that's not going to happen any time soon.
So given that war is a fact of human life, it is silly, in my opinion, to make a statement like hand to hand combat, rather than the use of drones, is preferable.
You cannot deny there is no shortage of books, play and films that have a strove very hard and been quite successful in depicting the horrors of war. Yet wars continue to be waged. It's not a case of just needing a few more gory pictures or hideous personal accounts and suddenly humanity will get the message.
In war people die. People who deserve to and people who do not. Unfortunately the number of the latter usually far outweigh the former, so any advancement in war technology that can reduce the latter and more precisely take out the former is, to my way of thinking, something to be welcomed.
Unless one has a romantic notion of war and killing, hacking your enemy to death with a machete in hand to hand combat is no better (or worse) than dispatching a drone to do so from an office somewhere in Nevada. The drone operator is not going to kill more people than the soldier on the ground because he doesn't get his hands bloody - quite probably the opposite.