Because the atomic unit of propaganda is not lies, it’s emphasis. With any article about anything, the most important question to ask is “Why are they writing about this right now, instead of anything else?” Granted, prisoner killing strikes most of us as a ghoulsh thing, but that alone doesnt make this newsworthy in the context of a war. The newsworthy part comes when the western press chooses to amplify this story while quashing others, playing up the other team’s crimes and ignoring our own,giving rise to the narrative of the enemy as universally inhuman and unworthy of mercy. Our war crimes are always accidents and mistakes, their war crimes are always the result of their inherent (perhaps hereditary) bloodlust.
The point of this “whataboutism” it to point out that this article is presenting the killing of prisoners of war as some kind of horrifying aberration from the norm, without actually saying what the norm is. Because the norm, for my entire life, has been the unnacountable mass slaughter by the US of not just POWs, but innocent people.
The killing of POWs is the norm, we set the norm, and now we’re crying foul when our enemies follow this norm while sweeping it under the rug when our allies do the same.
Am I saying this makes the killing of POWs morally good? No. Byt what I am saying is that this article was written in bad faith to perpetuate a war where our ally has been shelling civillians and deploying death squads for nine years, with shells and death squad training we gave them.
Decrying the killing of noncombatants is fine and good in a vaccum, but it’s a sick joke coming from the 200-year reigning Champion of Noncombatant Murder.
Because the atomic unit of propaganda is not lies, it’s emphasis. With any article about anything, the most important question to ask is “Why are they writing about this right now, instead of anything else?” Granted, prisoner killing strikes most of us as a ghoulsh thing, but that alone doesnt make this newsworthy in the context of a war. The newsworthy part comes when the western press chooses to amplify this story while quashing others, playing up the other team’s crimes and ignoring our own,giving rise to the narrative of the enemy as universally inhuman and unworthy of mercy. Our war crimes are always accidents and mistakes, their war crimes are always the result of their inherent (perhaps hereditary) bloodlust.
The point of this “whataboutism” it to point out that this article is presenting the killing of prisoners of war as some kind of horrifying aberration from the norm, without actually saying what the norm is. Because the norm, for my entire life, has been the unnacountable mass slaughter by the US of not just POWs, but innocent people.
The killing of POWs is the norm, we set the norm, and now we’re crying foul when our enemies follow this norm while sweeping it under the rug when our allies do the same.
Am I saying this makes the killing of POWs morally good? No. Byt what I am saying is that this article was written in bad faith to perpetuate a war where our ally has been shelling civillians and deploying death squads for nine years, with shells and death squad training we gave them.
Decrying the killing of noncombatants is fine and good in a vaccum, but it’s a sick joke coming from the 200-year reigning Champion of Noncombatant Murder.