What is a War Crime? Who is the victim and who is the victimizer? Where do we draw the line?
I came across this video on CollateralMurder.com. It shows the indiscriminate killing of two Reuters journalists in an unprovoked trigger happy frenzy of US soldiers in Baghdad. The wounded included two kids. The soldiers shot at what they thought were terrorists carrying guns. As it happens, they couldn’t tell the difference between an AK47 and a camera. They then shot at a van that tried to rescue a wounded journalist.
They cheered the shots. Whooped. Joked about how a Bradley tank had driven over a body. Shrugged off the news that kids had been shot at. Then there was a cover up. Reuters demanded the video footage and they couldn’t get it. Wikileaks.com let it out. Brace up. And think.
I’m not sure if I want to take sides. I have family in the armed forces in India. I get to hear their part of the story. My friends in Kashmir have shared their bit. Philip Zimbardo in the Lucifer Effect writes about what makes people evil. What makes a perfectly ordinary person commit crimes and then go back home and sleep it off.
It’s the operating system of the world we exist in that is flawed. It’s the apparatus of the human mind that is corruptible. We are the plague on the planet. And we hate each other. If only we could have an exodus of current ethical standards and if only empathy was more important than oil or bombs or water, we would probably stand a chance of getting better. We as a race our unwell. Empathy is the cure. That’s where it all begins.
Every ideological system has a seed of good intentions behind it. And I mean “every” system without exception. Then we start to think about it. And more people think about it. They discuss it. Meanings get lost in linguistics, signs are muddled in semiotics. We make it human. Then shit hits the fan. I guess that’s how it is every time.
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