For the citizens of the NATO countries, on the other hand, the war was virtual. They were mobilized not as combatants but as spectators.
The war was a spectacle: it aroused emotions in the intense but shallow way that sports do. The events in question were as remote
from their essential concerns as a football game, and even though the game was in deadly earnest, the deaths were mostly hidden, and
above all, they were someone else's. If war becomes unreal to the citizens of modern democracies, will they care enough to restrain
and control the violence exercized in their name?”
– Michael Ignatieff, Virtual War (2000, p. 3)