Goodbye Blue Monday

Marsheaux cover of Pure

Lightning Seeds - Pure

  This recently released video depicts an Apache helicopter crew firing on journalists that they mistake to be armed militia. After a van with two children in it pulls up to try and rescue an injured person, they fire on the van, injure the children inside, and later deny the immediate evacuation of those children.

  A knee-jerk anger response is the easy way out here. You can’t create professional murderers and expect them to be unenthusiastic about their work. I’ve seen other tapes in which individuals who had just hidden weapons or planted IEDs were killed. People are fine with that footage, but here they react in outrage. It’s like watching the Sopranos - you cheer Tony on as he causes the deaths of countless individuals, and yet by the end of the show, it’s his blood that you want. You do not deserve that satisfaction.

  In this video, somebody makes a mistake and declares that the wrong people are the enemy. Once that declaration is made, everyone behaves the way that they are trained and conditioned to behave. It’s hard to say that any one of us is beyond making that same mistake, knowing that our own lives are at risk, and hating the enemy because they’re trying just as hard to kill you and your friends.

  It is absolutely ridiculous to condemn these men, asshats though they may be, and at the same time be OK with the continuation of this conflict in general. The one thing that does make me angry is seeing all the people who had forgotten that all of this murder was still happening, get riled up and rally against what they perceive to be an injustice. Later tonight those same amnesiacs will be be in their sofas, comfortably watching LOST without a care in the world.

  But denying immediate medical care to children - what the fuck, government?