Monday, March 03, 2008

Dog over a cliff

Curious priorities we Americans have. The local L.A. news tonight (ABC affiliate) led with excerpts from this disturbing video of a couple of U.S. servicemen throwing a little puppy over a cliff (don't watch it if you're sqeamish about sudden puppy death). Not that I would minimize the needless cruelty here, but all the needless cruelty to human beings during the Iraq war doesn't seem to have inspired anything like such attention and outrage.

War, an enterprise that has as its purpose killing human beings, is an inherently coarsening activity. Should it surprise anybody that people who have killed others and seen their buddies die might get a bit casual about the value of life, perhaps even joking and lautghing about it?

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