I haven’t seen any of the current Al-Q atrocity videos. I don’t need to see them to know why they’re evil...
I haven’t seen any of the prison abuse photos. I don’t need to see them to know that we did a shameful thing...
I don’t understand why anyone _does_ need to look at these things. Do we really need voyeuristic blood porn to know the difference between good and evil, right and wrong? I keep hearing that the answer is yes. I just don’t want to believe it.
I must admit, it seems that some people do need to see it.
I don't know how often I've said something to someone about what happened, and they shrugged it off, but showed them a picture, then they took it seriously.
It may be something in the human animal, I don't know. I just assume, at this point, that anyone who wants to see a beheading video has seen one by now, and that any further linking to beheadings is just encouraging more beheadings.
A beheading is awful and just knowing that it happened is so grusome enough for me and I will not look. No thanks. I do hope more people will not link them and I appreciate that you will not be linking them Dean.
While I am certain that some people wish to see these videos like others crane their necks as they drive past a grisly traffic accident.... I fear that some people have no real clue as to what these terrorists really are doing.
It does bother me that we are inundated with hundreds of photos of our troops abusing Iraqis at Abu Ghraib - but photographs of a man's body with his bloody head now sitting on his back, or Saddam's henchmen chopping off someone's fingers, or bodies hurtling from the World Trade Building cannot and are not shown.
How about a warning - then show?
I always wonder.... If the rest of the world had photos of inmates at Auschwitz earlier....or of dead bodies in Rwanda earlier .... Would at least some of the world been moved to take action?
I'm not linking it either (nor did I link Kim). Two is enough. I agree that many need to see. We are too insulated from violence in the west. Sometimes a picture truly is worth 1,000 words...
Yes. A friend accepted as credible the line that the Nick Beg beheading was fake. (Otherwise everyone would have gotten blood on themselves, which didn't happen.) I tried to get him to look at the video, but he refused. It is a pseudo-snuff film, so he won't look at it. I later tried to get him to look at the child's play video, because it's correct but not offensive in that nobody really gets hurt. But of course, that is offensive too, so: no.
On the other hand, we have both looked at Abu Ghraib pictures a lot, they influenced us both a lot (as I agree that such things do reflect on a whole society), and they are a topic of conversation that never goes away.
Out of sight, out of mind. In my experience, it is exactly that simple.
Excluding some pictures excludes the story and the conclusions from the story. Showing some pictures endlessly means remembering the story endlessly and drawing conclusions endlessly.
In some cases, as with the child's play video, I think that is exactly what we need to do. This is the culture: do we want to change it, or simply accept its consequences for us? We had better keep that in mind.
In other cases, the answer given is no, we should exclude this. You can't persuade a man that what happened to Nick Berg was real if he excludes the evidence as disgusting.
The debate, the shared narrative, is a sort of average of what we show and don't show.
One thing that concerns me is that the terrorists themselves are shooting these videos and distributing them - they *want* the videos to be seen. I doubt they're stupid enough to think that the US will see the videos and think "oops, we should pull out of Iraq to stop this happening" - I think quite the opposite is the case and they just want to encourage more chaos by clouding the judgement of the occupying forces with thoughts of revenge.
As much as it may be important for some people to fully understand what kind of atrocities these terrorists are capable of, I think the occupying forces just need to be careful their decisions aren't affected by the videos; otherwise they may make rash judgement calls that are swayed by fear or anger or hatred, rather than by justice or the greater good.
Also, although I'd rather avoid watching it, I'd wouldn't mind in the slightest hearing about the perpetrators being trussed up and slaughtered like pigs.
I would love to have zarkawi in my hands, face to face and kick his fucking ass, and break every bone of his mucky animal body. I would love to make him get a taste of his own way. I hope he get catch real soon, believe me after he gets catch I’ll dance around his dirty animal body, and ask the soldiers to please let him alone with me in a cell and have his face up to a point that not even his fucking self animal can recognize.
I would love to have zarkawi in my hands, face to face and kick his fucking ass, and break every bone of his mucky animal body. I would love to make him get a taste of his own way. I hope he get catch real soon, believe me after he gets catch I’ll dance around his dirty animal body, and ask the soldier to please let him alone with me in a cell and have his face up to a point that not even his fucking self animal can recognize.
I haven’t seen any of the current Al-Q atrocity videos. I don’t need to see them to know why they’re evil...
I haven’t seen any of the prison abuse photos. I don’t need to see them to know that we did a shameful thing...
I don’t understand why anyone _does_ need to look at these things. Do we really need voyeuristic blood porn to know the difference between good and evil, right and wrong? I keep hearing that the answer is yes. I just don’t want to believe it.
I must admit, it seems that some people do need to see it.
I don't know how often I've said something to someone about what happened, and they shrugged it off, but showed them a picture, then they took it seriously.
It may be something in the human animal, I don't know. I just assume, at this point, that anyone who wants to see a beheading video has seen one by now, and that any further linking to beheadings is just encouraging more beheadings.
A beheading is awful and just knowing that it happened is so grusome enough for me and I will not look. No thanks. I do hope more people will not link them and I appreciate that you will not be linking them Dean.
I'm not sure I agree with everyone.
While I am certain that some people wish to see these videos like others crane their necks as they drive past a grisly traffic accident.... I fear that some people have no real clue as to what these terrorists really are doing.
It does bother me that we are inundated with hundreds of photos of our troops abusing Iraqis at Abu Ghraib - but photographs of a man's body with his bloody head now sitting on his back, or Saddam's henchmen chopping off someone's fingers, or bodies hurtling from the World Trade Building cannot and are not shown.
How about a warning - then show?
I always wonder.... If the rest of the world had photos of inmates at Auschwitz earlier....or of dead bodies in Rwanda earlier .... Would at least some of the world been moved to take action?
I'm not linking it either (nor did I link Kim). Two is enough. I agree that many need to see. We are too insulated from violence in the west. Sometimes a picture truly is worth 1,000 words...
But those who most need to see won't look.
"But those who most need to see won't look."
Yes. A friend accepted as credible the line that the Nick Beg beheading was fake. (Otherwise everyone would have gotten blood on themselves, which didn't happen.) I tried to get him to look at the video, but he refused. It is a pseudo-snuff film, so he won't look at it. I later tried to get him to look at the child's play video, because it's correct but not offensive in that nobody really gets hurt. But of course, that is offensive too, so: no.
On the other hand, we have both looked at Abu Ghraib pictures a lot, they influenced us both a lot (as I agree that such things do reflect on a whole society), and they are a topic of conversation that never goes away.
Out of sight, out of mind. In my experience, it is exactly that simple.
Excluding some pictures excludes the story and the conclusions from the story. Showing some pictures endlessly means remembering the story endlessly and drawing conclusions endlessly.
In some cases, as with the child's play video, I think that is exactly what we need to do. This is the culture: do we want to change it, or simply accept its consequences for us? We had better keep that in mind.
In other cases, the answer given is no, we should exclude this. You can't persuade a man that what happened to Nick Berg was real if he excludes the evidence as disgusting.
The debate, the shared narrative, is a sort of average of what we show and don't show.
One thing that concerns me is that the terrorists themselves are shooting these videos and distributing them - they *want* the videos to be seen. I doubt they're stupid enough to think that the US will see the videos and think "oops, we should pull out of Iraq to stop this happening" - I think quite the opposite is the case and they just want to encourage more chaos by clouding the judgement of the occupying forces with thoughts of revenge.
As much as it may be important for some people to fully understand what kind of atrocities these terrorists are capable of, I think the occupying forces just need to be careful their decisions aren't affected by the videos; otherwise they may make rash judgement calls that are swayed by fear or anger or hatred, rather than by justice or the greater good.
Also, although I'd rather avoid watching it, I'd wouldn't mind in the slightest hearing about the perpetrators being trussed up and slaughtered like pigs.
I would love to have zarkawi in my hands, face to face and kick his fucking ass, and break every bone of his mucky animal body. I would love to make him get a taste of his own way. I hope he get catch real soon, believe me after he gets catch I’ll dance around his dirty animal body, and ask the soldiers to please let him alone with me in a cell and have his face up to a point that not even his fucking self animal can recognize.
I would love to have zarkawi in my hands, face to face and kick his fucking ass, and break every bone of his mucky animal body. I would love to make him get a taste of his own way. I hope he get catch real soon, believe me after he gets catch I’ll dance around his dirty animal body, and ask the soldier to please let him alone with me in a cell and have his face up to a point that not even his fucking self animal can recognize.