Guardian Editor: European Audience Troubled More by the Toll War Takes on Innocents

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/27/guardian__editor_on_coverage_of

Guardian Editor on Coverage of Afghan War Logs: European Audience "Troubled More...by the Toll this War is Taking on Innocent People"
Guardian

We speak with David Leigh, the investigations editor at The Guardian, one of the three newspapers, along with the New York Times and Der Spiegel, WikiLeaks gave the Afghanistan war documents to. "Broadly, we see a similar picture in the three media. What we do see is quite a different political perspective. From the New York Times’s point of view...it was interesting to see that the relationship with Pakistan was a political priority," Leigh says. "With us, we’re more concerned about the casualties, I think. We’re troubled more, a European audience, by the toll this war is taking on innocent people."

watch/listen/read

Life is valued way more in Europe.

there exists some sort of 'mean streak' that has become exalted in this culture.

in Jamaica - life has no value here.

The are:

1. Brown

and

2. Moooslim

Deep, dark, racial/religious :sarcasm: intended.

For most modern Europeans, the devastation of war isn't some abstract thing. They grew up seeing pictures of their homelands destroyed in the World Wars, and hearing relatives talk about how their town was destroyed, their family was uprooted, and their relatives were killed. They grew up with parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles who walked with limps, or showed off scars they picked up in the wars. They listened as family members described what it was like to watch, with childs eyes, as a foreign army marched through their town. It hits very close to home.

The U.S. hasn't experienced a wide scale war on its soil since 1865. To us, war is something that happens "elsewhere", and suffering is something delivered in 15 second clips on the nightly news. Modern Americans simply don't have a comparable point of reference.

for the US would be the civil war. Nobody is alive today who experienced that.

And included in that group are those who follow orders to fire on unarmed persons and torture prisoners in their custody.

:hi: