Archives » Tuesday, March 04, 2008
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David Botti
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Mar 4, 2008 10:17 AM
A disturbing new video out of Iraq has found its way onto the Internet
and set off a flurry of condemnations and demands to reveal the
identity of the U.S. serviceman involved. The video, which has been
removed from YouTube, depicted a U.S. Marine grabbing a puppy by the
neck and flinging the animal off a cliff. Due to the low quality of the
video, there was no way to see where, or how, the dog landed. Some are
still questioning the authenticity of this video, but it certainly did
look real enough to solicit this interesting analysis of the video from
media blogger Rex Sorgatz (via Gawker):
Logically, we know this soldier has possibly killed people in Iraq, so
it feels misplaced to vent about a puppy in a war zone; emotionally, we
find hurting a helpless puppy beyond reproach. If the video weren't
shot in Iraq (if it were, say, some tweens torturing a dog in a
backyard -- you'll find plenty of this on YouTube), the tension
wouldn't be there, and it wouldn't be today's viral hit. The
contradiction -- people vs. puppies; war vs. peace-keeping -- will
probably catapult this thing to network nightly news.
As this blogger chronicles, a number of people immediately set off on a hunt
to find the identity of the Marine involved in the incident. Some
mainstream media sources picked up the story looking into the Marine
Corps' response to the matter. From the Minneapolis Star Tribune:
The named Marine returned to Hawaii in October from Haqlaniyah,
Iraq, after a seven-month deployment, Maj. Chris Perrine, a Marine
spokesman, told the Honolulu Advertiser.
"We're still trying to figure out, is this a legitimate video?"
Perrine told the newspaper. "Was it edited? Is it [that Marine] who's
in it? We don't know. We'll find that out hopefully sooner rather than
later."
There
seems to be larger issues at play here than just a disturbing video.
Echoing Sorgatz's views on the matter, others are wondering why the
death of a puppy in the middle of a war is causing such outrage. From Cenk Uygur, an AOL media blogger:
But
I'm not writing to say what a bad guy this Marine is for throwing
the puppy like he does. That's obvious. I'm not writing to implicate
the whole Marine Corps for the act of two goofballs who are not
representative of our troops over there...No, I'm writing about our
reaction as a society. I have now seen this story everywhere from all
over the internet to the local news. Everyone is outraged. Are you
kidding me? We caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent
Iraqi civilians and we're outraged over a puppy?!
Some
may object to Uygur's characterization of the death of "hundreds of
thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians"--others may think it's right
on--but what's interesting is how debate over the tastefulness of the
video has grown to how we judge the degrees of right and wrong in war.
Is it because the puppy is a symbol of innocence? Is it because people
wonder what kind of conditions drove this Marine to throw a puppy off a
cliff? There are far more stories about U.S. soldiers adopting stray
dogs in Iraq. So, how does this fact relate to the behavior in the
video? Perhaps a discussion on the matter is just starting; there's a
lot of unanswered questions, and a lot of self-reflection still left.
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