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Let me first say that killing unarmed ANYONE is wrong. And that I did get queezie watching this video. We are suppose to be better than this. That being said, w
by failquicker 17y ago
Let me first say that killing unarmed ANYONE is wrong. And that I did get queezie watching this video. We are suppose to be better than this. That being said, war is not clean. It is not merely a set of commands and rules that are followed where everything turns out ok. It is horrible.
I have been in the smoke of war. Crazy things happen out there. Sometimes, there are children with guns and bombs too. And those bullets kill just as well. It is easy to make mistakes when you're in an area where there are very real threats to your life and the lives of your friends all around. Even so, they are MISTAKES. I don't believe these pilots felt as though they were murdering these people. I'm sure at the time they felt they were dealing with a real threat. But they made egregious errors in judgement and caused a terrible tragedy because of those mistakes.
But there is another tragedy in this case. In the military there is a process called an "After Action Review" that is suppose to be done after EVERY mission. It is a time to look back on what happened, talk openly, and analyse how things could have been handled better. The military could have used this horrid event as a way to change training and tactics to prevent things like this from happening in the future. In just a few hours of being released on the net, there are already scores of dissection and analysis about how things could have been done differently. Imagine if tactical analysts had reviewed this and in theater pilot briefings were changed to reflect the results of that review. Imagine if the military had actually acted in good faith on this event instead of trying to cover it up. This is 2010. The event happened in 2007. And still they did not release the video. It had to be leaked.
In cases like this where mistakes were made, the government loses any credibility to "mitigating circumstances" when they try to cover it up.
I hope one day the military can be more transparent with this sort of action.
I hope one day that we don't need an organization like wikileaks, but I am so glad we have them right now.
And most of all, I hope we aren't going to be watching a similar video in 2013 of a similar event that happened this week.