Turkey down Russian warplane over claimed airspace violation

[Bearlove]

The only things we do know - the Jet was in Turkish airspace when it should not have been (an act of hostility regardless the circumstances), the jet was shot down and the pilot shot during his decent.

We do not know why the jet was there in the first place, the intention of the pilot or the mission he was carrying out.

Should the guy have been allowed to land, go get another jet and carry on his duties? Maybe the people who shot the guy down do not agree with the areal bombardment of civilians in Syria? Maybe taking him out of the equation is the only thing that can do to defend the people that they know?

Surely a guy dying from 16000ft from an unknown enemy is exactly the same thing as he was trained to do? Should we show any more compassion for a pilot of a fighter jet being shot than anyone else that is casually and callously killed in times of conflict?

Bear

 

[Sprout]

No, we should automatically have compassion for the true, but immeasurable, cost of simply existing as a person in that current place at that current time.
Our world is defined by borders formed through simply not valuing the impact every needlessly killed pawn could have made if only they were born in a time or place not defined by hostility.

The idea that we are deeply different, but infinitely more valuable, than those outside the diplomatic boundaries we reside in is drilled into us from birth. It is nurtured as a positive, "Nationalism" I believe is the term, right up until you're so convinced of its truth you deem it a more valuable construct than your own mortality, and the mortality of others as but a target, an obstacle, an objective, anything as long as you forget that the exact same priming has occurred in the other Homo sapien born on the "other side".

I support Turkey's right to defend its "sovereign territory", forgetting we are but a stain on the Earth's geography, with appropriate response to an event many would deem a threat -thankfully the UK isn't a place where the sky is often marked by fire from the fuel tank of fighter jets unleashing the most destructive weaponry the Military Industrial Complex can sell to the suit wearing billionaires behind the deaths of the expendable underclass.

I am not at all defending any act of despicable cruelty committed by any man, every drop of blood shed comes from our collective species whether they were born inside or outside the petty lines drawn up by ruthless dictators in the blood, sweat and tears of "countrymen", paid a pittance to pay the ultimate price.

The Turkish hardware that downed the plane could have very easily been used to purposely obliterate a man performing the exact same job, but under the flag of another.
It wasn't, it was used to remove the threat - the weapons systems that are not a part of the biological computer responding to orders.
A primate suspended in the freezing abyss of the upper atmosphere by air resistance and string is not the same as a primate pushing buttons to initiate the simple movement of electrons that will result in the disintegration of tissue, the disintegration of protein, spreading the amino acids that once formed someone who laughed, lived and loved just like us over a stretch of land that isn't important in any way other than acting as an excuse to disintegrate the very fabric of humanity.

If being trained to do something makes it somehow automatically correct, right or just then it's a dark day. I have been trained in a specific field that could be utilised to spread Septicaemic Plague from the skies onto civilians, that doesn't permit Biological Warfare. The squishy matter in our heads can be shaped by exposure to a stimulus, whether that stimulus leads to Nuclear annihilation or the baking of delicious cookies is of no importance to neuron formation. We can be trained by repeated exposure to perform anything at all, and that is exactly what occurs when we casually accept the death of our kin in the service of naught but words and images to keep the cycle going.

 

[Bearlove]

So we should have the same compassion for anyone who is killed as all lives are equal and the 'meat puppets' are just doing what they have been trained to do. The people in the street being blown to bits by bombs dropped on their home are no more important than the guy dropping the bombs, he is doing it because it's his job.

Not sure I can personally live like that though.

Bear

 

[Sprout]

Just wanted to say thank you for the interesting debate earlier.