If you haven’t seen the video that just broke showing the massacre of civilians by sadistic US army helicopter gunners, it is very highly recommended. I’ll say more on this later, but first it urgently just needs to be seen.
Full version (17 min)
MSNBC presentation is below as well (although the latter half starts interviewing some despicable characters who try to justify the massacre by any means possible).
I’m looking forward to when you get a chance to write more, because I unfortunately can’t view the video here. It sounds terrible. But about the second paragraph, isn’t it precisely that something needs to be contextualized instead of decontextualized before it can be judged? Judges are supposed to remain unbiased, to keep their personal contexts out of the picture, but they should certainly look into the context of the event itself, no? Otherwise murder in self-defense would be as reprehensible as murder in cold blood. In saying this I certainly don’t intend to support the self-excusing soldiers, whose “context” sounds like bullshit, and I understand what I think is your point that we can become de-sensitized to appalling things when we’re pre-conditioned to excuse their circumstances (well, we’re at war, therefore…).
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