*Graphic Content* Collateral Murder - Views from a Apache

[iwishweallcouldwin]

YouTube- Wikileaks: Collateral Murder~part one of two

YouTube- Wikileaks: Collateral Murder~part two of two

Collateral Murder? A bad case of mistaken identity? War fatigue? The dark side of politics? What are your views?

[vinz]

Soldiers with dangerous mindsets. Plus technology has made combat too in-personal. On the other hand, face-to-face combat was perhaps too numbing.

Soldiers these days are less warriors with code of honour, and more just plain dumb jocks with big guns.

And before we criticise other armies, think about the stupid overly gungho (and various other personality type) platoon mate during National Service. Some people are just too dumb and immature to be allowed to carry weapons.

[BFG]

Pity. Mistaken of identity. Do you guys remember another incident over at Palestine where a couple of reporter and cameramen who was taping a Israeli tank moving towards them and the tank commander mistook both of them thinking they were carrying a rocket propelled grenade while the camera man was actually carrying a video camera. The tank opened fire and the video became blank after that. No one survived.

The worst part of this episode that was linked here is innocent children got hit. I really hate it when this happen. For all the technology they claim they posses, they could not prevent hitting the innocent. All I see now are armies of child killer. They think they are in the right, due to political will or popularity vote poll. The killing of children is unacceptable in my view. How would a parent feel if they knew their child was hit by an Apache helicopter? I have turn my back on all stuff relating to military when I saw dead children bodies during the Iraqi war. I am really lucky and glad to be a Singaporean.

[TyroneGenade]

Technically, an act of murder has to both include the intent to kill a particular person and the actual act of killing (mens rea and actus rea). As the intent of the soldiers was not to kill the bystanders it isn't murder. Negligent homocide, perhaps. Man slaughter, certainly.

Sadly, it is war, and in war innocent people die. This isn't because soldiers don't care for innocent people, but that they don't have time to stop and ask: "hey, do you want to kill me?" That the soldiers are several meters up in the air, far removed from the action doesn't remedy the situation. Given the high mortality rate of civilians as related to long-distance engagement (cruise missiles, Apache helicopters etc...) one can only conclude that those people make the decisions value the lives of their soldiers more than the civilians who get killed. This type of thing is all the more angering because no real victory can be achieved by swatting people from the air. The only way to win is to go in on foot and clear out the militants one-to-one.

[BFG]

Whether technicality, with intent or not, a life is taken. The effect of a single innocent life taken has affected the lives of others depending on that 1 person who was killed accidentally. The person who initiated the shooting would not know that the innocent person he fired upon may have a family that he is supporting, an aged parent or 2, a wife and 1,2,3 or maybe even 4 children. Now multiply this by the number of person being killed in that link and guess how many those innocent people left behind to fend for themselves? Are the ones being killed accidentally receive any compensation from that military?

A war is no reason to accept that innocent victim as casualty are a norm. Wars can be avoided but if a war occurs because of a nation drive to have a control on a certain element which would be profitable to that nation, then the blood of the innocence shall be forever on the hands of that nation. The protocol of that military is to engage when fired upon but evidently, nothing of that sort was happening. The worst part of it, we the public, being informed through the media that innocent children were on the casualty list, are witnesses to a tragedy that shouldn't have happened. This is a crime against humanity. The 2 person on that war machine should be sent to trial on war crime, the shooting of innocent. They lack judgement and did not follow protocol.