Tuesday, April 6, 2010

War, through the looking glass

The news being ever more depressing these days, I tend to only skim for the abundance of articles that allow me to mock the media's view points. I haven't found any of those yet.

This morning there is much ado about video footage of a gunship doing dirty work in Iraq. The armchair warrioring going on is disturbing, as looking at grainy IR footage is not the way to best judge a situation. This is one reason I think the public at large should be cautious about how much war they watch on TV.

There are so many war videos available now that a majority of people are seeing a part of life normally reserved for the few who actually go into harms way and become a part of it. I can't bring myself to say that it's unhealthy, as time will be the final judge of that; but when the non-warrior population watch 24 hour streams of war, they are going to have a bias that leans towards condemning what they see. That is natural.

Maybe the crew of that gunship had black hearts and just wanted to kill some people, but I highly doubt it. Maybe they mistook cameras for weapons, but again, I highly doubt it. The footage is raw warfare in black and white; you can say all you want about what you would have done, but your opinion is entirely after the fact.

If you really want to know how you would handle yourself in the situation, go get your commission and fly a gunship, or enlist and go fight with a rifle. If you outright condemn war on its face, then you are irrational. War is Natural Law, and we shall have much more of it in our time.

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