The horrific massacre done by our U.S. military, was a visual I won’t ever forget in this WikiLeaks video. It’s ironic that the video posted more than a decade ago has a little more than 1 million views but a Tik Tok video can reach 5 million views in 2 days. All our lives, we’re raised to be patriotic to our country as we have firework shows every 4th of July, we recite the pledge of allegiance every day in grade school, and we fly the American flag on our front lawn. I think we find ourselves overlooking wrongdoings by the government when it’s not directly affecting us but to see a first hand account erases a lot of that blind loyalty. Being a soldier is perceived as one of the most heroic positions because they lay down their lives. Nowhere in that definition of being a soldier do we take into consideration the lives they take. We’re taught to believe that the people we kill during war is for the greater good but innocence isn’t black and white. The whole ordeal reminds me of this famous quote by Voltaire.
One of the most unsettling aspects of the video was the way they spoke about killing these men. Much like a videogame that young boys play where they shoot carelessly through a controller at digital people on the screen while spouting vulgar obscenities. The only difference between these two groups was that those American soldiers were actually taking lives. Along the lines of “Got those suckers” thrown together with demeaning curses, the whole ordeal was much like a hunter killing its prey. There’s no justification for running over the bodies as if they were driving over a speed bump. Not only did they take the lives of those men but they also ended up shooting children. They had a clear vision of the window of the car where two children sat and still they shot at the vehicle with no remorse or compassion. In America we pursue justice at its highest tier when there are school shootings and children die, though it seems that the life of a child in a foreign land is not as important.
No comments:
Post a Comment