Friday, January 09, 2009

Defence or Deception?




[Picture: Dina Alshahwan, from facebook]
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18 comments:

Scott Jensen said...

Or misleading. At first glance, one might think the soldier is hostile to the child. But look at his trigger finger. It is in the safety position. And many soldiers carry their guns this way. Some even have a bit of Velcro to help it stay up. It then is closer to aiming position if things instantly go bad. Also look at the teenage boy and how casual he is walking into view. The small child just looks curious about an adult.

6:04 am
Huma Shah said...

For humanity's sake, on any glance, why has the soldier the gun in the air? Both child and soldier look anxious. What stance would you expect a teenager to adopt under the circumstances? Anything other than "casual" and he could be considered an Hamas terrorist.

6:02 pm
Scott Jensen said...

Many soldiers (US soldiers included) are taught to carry their rifles on top of their chest gear. Look at his chest under the gun and you'll see the gear there. Soldiers essentially rest their rifles on top it and thus the rifle is actually easier to carry since it is their torso and not their arms that are carrying their rifle. As I stated in my last comment, some soldiers go so far as attach Velcro there and to their gun to make it even easier. It also has the added benefit (as I stated also in my last comment) of putting the gun closer to a firing position if trouble happens all of a sudden.

Additionally, the soldier is leaning up against the green wall to further take a load off his feet.

And neither look anxious at all. Again, look at the soldier's trigger finger. As I stated last time and will now further explain, it is out of the finger guard. Out and above it as it should be when on the human version of "safety". A gun has a "safety" switch that prevents the gun from accidentally firing, but soldiers are always told to turn it off when on patrol or ending up dead because they took a second to flip it off. If the soldier was on edge, his finger would be in the finger guard. No, the soldier looks very bored and just looking at the small child that has come to look him up ... as all small children (especially boys) do of any adult, especially one wearing "cool" stuff like a military uniform and having a gun.

And the teen isn't acting casual but is casual.

If anyone is making this out to be some hostile act towards the child, they're misleading people. To prove that, they should show photographs of what happened before and after. My bet is nothing happened. The child probably walked up, looked at the soldier, asked him a child's question or two, and then went off to play again.

Sorry, but I'll be kind and simply take it that you know little about being a soldier and leave it at that. I have been a soldier and also possess a degree in psychology so I know I'm spot on.

7:03 pm
Huma Shah said...

I don't give two hoots what soldiers are taught and you only need a degree in empathy and humanity to know that it is INHUMANE to have a visible gun in the presence of children, conflict or no conflict.

8:06 pm
Scott Jensen said...

It "is INHUMANE to have a visible gun in the presence of children, conflict or no conflict."??? Go to your local airport and you'll anti-terrorist police and soldiers banishing their machine guns there in full view of everyone, including children. The photograph was taken of a soldier in the violent Mid-East on patrol. What did you expect him to have? A lollipop? Flowers? This is how soldiers look when on patrol. And when on patrol, they interact with the public and that includes children.

8:21 pm
Huma Shah said...

You've been to Heathrow (local airport) have you? "Banishing" or "interacting" with a long gun at that angle with young children nearby, is not right, you don't get it.

11:47 am
Scott Jensen said...

I'm afraid you're the one that doesn't get it. The soldier in the photograph was on patrol in a very likly very hostile location. Soldiers have their weapons out while on patrol in hostile locations. Look at US soldiers on patrol in Iraq. Same deal.

But there was nothing hostile in the photograph you posted. The soldier wasn't pointing his gun at the small child in a threatening way or even pointing his gun intentionally at the child.

If you think soldiers shouldn't have their guns out while on patrol, you are just being unrealistic. If you think soldiers on patrol don't interact with the public, you're just uninformed. You think that photograph makes some heavy social and/or political statement. It does, but not the one you're trying to make. You are reading into it what doesn't exist.

5:30 pm
Huma Shah said...

Now where've I read that before, Scott knows 'x' better because of 'y'! :-)

2:12 pm
Scott Jensen said...

"Y" being facts, college degree, experience, knowledge, and logic. ;-)

4:14 pm
Huma Shah said...

Not "facts" opinions, not "logic", belief! :-)

Armed with all that knowledge and experience, I expect you'll be putting it to use resolving world conflicts and reducing civilian deaths, especially women and children?

7:57 pm
Scott Jensen said...

You can call facts "opinions" and logic "belief", but you would only be lying to yourself. I have made a very solid case against your unsupported facts (a.k.a. opinions) and unsupported logic (a.k.a. beliefs). I have given support for all my statements. You haven't.

Now just admit I'm right. :-)

11:04 pm
Huma Shah said...

You have no more knowledge of that situation than I do. You cannot know the mind of those children or that soldier no more than I can. War is horrible and it's always the weak that suffer.

9:42 am
Scott Jensen said...

But that's where you're wrong. I do have more knowledge of that situation than you do. I have been a solider, trained as a soldier, and have a degree in psychology, which has taught how to read body language and an understanding of social psychology. And if that isn't bad enough, you are trying to make that photograph fit your very biased view of a current event. I am not. I am looking at it and reading what's in the photograph and looking for indicators one way or another.

And while war is horrible, the alternative can and usually is much worse. Ask a Jew or a Chinese citizen if they think WWII was worth it. Ask a black American if they think the Civil War was worth it. The weak did suffer in those and countless other situations but they suffered because of a lack of war on their behalf. It was war that saved them.

6:47 pm
Huma Shah said...

There you go again, self-projecting accusing others of bias. You are very wrong again, as you were when you claimed you knew American people better.

If you have knowledge of THAT situation then perhaps you can explain why the soldier is not smiling at the child? Are soldiers drilled into emotionless roboticism not to smile when they interact with humans? I've baby sat my four nephews since they were very young and that look on the child's face in the photograph is not one of curiosity.

"It was war that saved them"? - I don't recall WWII saving Jewish people, in fact it attempted to wipe them out in Europe. And sorry, this current situation in Gaza is not "saving" the Gazans, what it may do is bring sanctions that could affect civilians in Israel for their high-command's folly of breaking the ceasefire.

10:05 pm
Scott Jensen said...

Oh, so because you THINK that I was wrong in one situation, I'm wrong in another? Do you even think before you type such rubbish?

The soldier isn't smiling because he's bored. He's walking around with about 50 to 120 pounds of gear in Mideast temperatures on a boring patrol. I am going to shock you and make you think I'm a very evil person. When I was a soldier and in uniform, I didn't smile at every child I came across either.

As for babysitting nephews trumping my degree in psychology, LOL!!!! Oh, and I also have babysat my nephews and nieces but I would NEVER be so foolish as to say that gave me any credentials in child psychology.

And war did save the Jews. It was the Allies that defeated Nazi Germany and closed the death camps where the Nazis were gassing and incarcerating the Jews. And not just German Jews but all Jews in all Nazi-occupied lands.

As for current situation in Gaza saving Gazans, I didn't say it was. They deserve what they're getting. It is the Gazans that broke the cease-fire. Or do you consider thousands of rocket attacks by Gazans into Israel not a hostile act? Oh, let me guess. You don't believe they fired any missiles into Israel. They were just having a love fest when the Israelis attacked them without reason. LOL

10:55 pm
Huma Shah said...

You certainly didn't stop to consider before posting "As for current situation in Gaza saving Gazans, I didn't say it was. They deserve what they're getting"


No doubt you'll 'reason' that Robert Fisk is biased too, I'll leave you with an excerpt from his 7 January piece in the Independent:

"And our leaders will huff and puff and remind the world that Hamas originally broke the ceasefire.

It didn't.

Israel broke it, first on 4 November when its bombardment killed six Palestinians in Gaza and again on 17 November when another bombardment killed four more Palestinians.

Yes, Israelis deserve security. Twenty Israelis dead in 10 years around Gaza is a grim figure indeed. But 600 Palestinians dead in just over a week ..."

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-why-do-they-hate-the-west-so-much-we-will-ask-1230046.html

11:20 pm
Scott Jensen said...

And I'll leave you with this one. By the Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit. Hardly an Israel apologist.

http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2008/12/idf-continues-airstrikes-as-gazans-fire.html

11:48 pm
Huma Shah said...

Your ego, your fear of being 'trumped' is pathetic, Scott. That you could write "They deserve what they're getting" with the knowledge of the death, slaughter of so many children is sickening. So much for your "degree in psychology", specialised in 'inhumanity' is what you are.

Avi Shlaim's sums up well:

"I write as someone who served loyally in the Israeli army in the mid-1960s and who has never questioned the legitimacy of the state of Israel within its pre-1967 borders. What I utterly reject is the Zionist colonial project beyond the "green line".

The Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza strip in the aftermath of the war of June 1967 had very little to do with security and everything to do with territorial expansionism. The aim was to establish "greater Israel" through permanent political, economic, and military control over the Palestinian territories. The result has been one of the most prolonged and brutal military occupations of modern times."

http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/israel-and-gaza-rhetoric-and-reality#comments_for_node


Save your energy and time, this will be the last comment on this post.

12:00 am

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