Believe me; democracy in action can be an unpretty sight. - Iain Banks

So it's false."
"What isn't?"
"Intellectual achievement. The exercise of skill. Human feeling.

That was how divorced from the human scale modern warfare had become. You could smash and destroy from unthinkable distances, obliterate planets from beyond their own system and provoke stars into novae from light-years off...and still have no good idea why you were really fighting.

“I’m very sorry,” the drone said, without a trace of contrition.