From a reader:
Jonah,
What I think Alice Walker and your correspondent both fail to realize is that if it actually were easier to fight wars with pillows, we’d for darn sure be using them.
An Australian friend once related to me an event that occurred when he was in the Australian Defence Force, during a joint training exercise with the US Army and USAF. My friend was plotting with his squad to take a particular feature (hill) on the battlefield and figuring it was going to require an extreme amount of effort and (pretend) casualties. An American officer asked what they were doing, and when my friend replied that they were plotting to take the feature, the American responded, “No problem. Just call in the F-4s. No more feature.”
If pillows could do that, they be deployed in every theatre on the globe!