Americans were shocked by a video released by the Islamic State depicting the execution by immolation of a captured Jordanian pilot. But the United States burned many, many Iraqis to death in 2004 – and nobody cared. Why the different reactions?
Burning with Rage at The Other
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication, WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "The Stringer."
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To be virtuous one must never see the injuries one inflicts.
It is not the infliction of these injuries that despoils the soul, but the experience of the soul in intense consciousness of the terror of these injuries.
The choice, then, is to refrain from inflicting these terrible injuries or, to a certain mindset, to look away while inflicting them.
Unrelenting, patriotic fervor … that’s what propaganda bottlenecks sustain. The more restricted the bottleneck, the more adamant the patriotism.
DanD
The reasons I go to Ted’s blog is we often see things the same way, and many time Ted sees thing in a way that others don’t; but we should.
Few Americans know what “Willy Pete” (WP) is. It was portrayed in a scene in the movie “Fury”. It is banned by international rules of warfare. The U.S. apparently still uses it, along with depleted uranium. The U.S. maintains biological weapons and supposedly will be refurbishing nuclear weapons.
The allies firebombed civilians in Europe and the U.S. firebombed and nuked the Japanese. Extermination took place under the noses of the German people.
“Polite” people look the other way; not for us to see. Crews in bombers are far above the devastation they have wrought. Those who fire the artillery, the rockets, the missiles and the drones are far away.
The 9-11 attacks, as much as anything, were an attempt to make the American people understand what their government does all the time. Of course, that message had to be covered over.
Burning a pilot alive will not lead to any understanding by populations of the imperialist countries; but it gives their groups recognition and helps their recruiting and fund raising.
Hanging and burning slaves had the same effect in this country. Early immigrants to the Americas burned people as witches.
One of the great inventions and selling points of Christianity is washing away of the sins. How could the Vatican exist without that?
This is all what humans do; no other species. As Chomsky said recently, humans are probably an evolutionary mistake. If there was “design”, the operating system was lousy.
As a famous/infamous ? – in any event, well-known – US chief of state once remarked, «Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal»…. 😉
Henri