War Dead
I don't know about you, but I always worry whenever the West is at war somewhere else in the world, that - because we're so responsive to concerns at home that our armies not contravene Geneva conventions and whatall abroad (even if/when/after they've been contravened to GET abroad in the first place) we aren't just labelling the other side's war dead as terrorists, insurgents, Taliban, etc, for the sake of convenience. And to look like better invaders than maybe we really are.
I mean, it's bad enough when we invade other countries to make them behave up to our high standards of human rights and democracy, that we end up killing some civilians in the process - but, at least, we LABEL them civilians (caught in the crossfire, caught being human shields, caught being local to where the invading force is fighting).
I worry about all the dead who have been labelled WRONGLY because it was just assumed, "We were invading an enclave of enemy combatants and thirty people were killed, therefore thirty enemy combatants were killed."
But what if maybe only two were enemy combatants and the other twenty-eight were just pretending to go along with the other two until they could safely switch sides and join the invading force to rid their country of the enemy combatants and ultimately the invading force which would mean there would be no reason to send our soldiers over there to kill or be killed.
Sigh.
War dead details really get me down - and I'm not even a supporter of the troops. Er, I mean, mission. Mission. I'm not a supporter of the mission.
Phew. That was close.
