General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Like it or Not, Bradley Manning is a Traitor [View all]hfojvt
(37,573 posts)1. Do not start one.
Once a war is started, then following rules does seem kinda silly, except in the propaganda sense. You want to be able to paint your enemies as savage, brutal barbarians and yourself as the honest and decent defenders of all that is right. The actual truth is bound to be a mixture of the two.
In this video though, the wounded are not able to be captured. The ground forces are still a ways away. If the other vehicle loads up the wounded and drives away, then those enemies have escaped.
The video can be made to make us look like bad guys because it has no context. All it shows is the twelve or so that we killed, including two wounded children. The 198 that our enemies killed, or the 95 that our enemies killed, including probably a number of children is not included for context.
Even among the Americans on this board, there was a huge amount of rage whipped up over this video. Almost nobody dared to mention the people we were supposedly fighting. But here they usually get a free pass anyway, since we were the ones who invaded.
And as for shock and awe. Well the odd thing about that is that it was apparently designed to minimize killing as much as possible. We dropped enough bombs there to kill everybody in the cities that we bombed. That bombing could have been much more destructive and deadly than it was.
Point is that once Saddam fell, a lot of the violence being directed at Iraqis was coming from other Iraqis, and presumbly our objective was to stop that. Something I consider to be a worthy objective.