are we getting use to war deaths

[boycie43uk]

i just looked up at sky news to see another british soldier has died in basra.
just thought to myself oh well, i wasnt shocked by it just excepted it.
as an ex serviceman i should have been shocked or upset but now its getting the norm to hear of british/american servicemen getting killed, and also hundreds of innocent iraqis.
is this what bush and blair want from us now, just except it and they can get away with doing what ever they want.
boyc

[Garrett]

Is the saying something like, 1 deaths is shocking, 2 deaths a tragedy 100 deaths a statistic.

[overkill]

Originally Posted by Garrett

Is the saying something like, 1 deaths is shocking, 2 deaths a tragedy, 1000 deaths a statistic.

Yup. I think that was Stalins comment. Hitler argued that people can only grasp small numbers with regards death. Give people one or two deaths and they are horrified, give them 50-100 and they are deeply shocked. But give them a million and they refuse to (in his words, 'their limited intelligence cannot') accept the possibility............

Back on topic, it has nothing to do with Bush or Blair. During any conflict, anywhere in the World, while all soldiers deaths are a tragedy, people move on if a conflict drags on long enough. I doubt whether every soldiers death during wartime shocked people - apart from their family of course. It's human nature.

Plus of course the media get bored and stop trying to shock us.

[Joe90sDad]

Originally Posted by overkill

Plus of course the media get bored and stop trying to shock us.

No, the media JUST get bored. Most were complicit in the sale of this invasion. The journalists got their war, donned their camouflage jackets and came home for tea and medals to write their book. Now it's getting boring.

[Mep]

The journalists got their war, donned their camouflage jackets and came home for tea and medals to write their book

Terry Lloyd's family may wish to disagree with you on that one.

[RMCF]

Originally Posted by boycie43uk

i just looked up at sky news to see another british soldier has died in basra.
just thought to myself oh well, i wasnt shocked by it just excepted it.
as an ex serviceman i should have been shocked or upset but now its getting the norm to hear of british/american servicemen getting killed, and also hundreds of innocent iraqis.
is this what bush and blair want from us now, just except it and they can get away with doing what ever they want.
boyc

Boycie

I was thinking exactly the same thing less than an hour ago, while I too was watching Sky News.

For some reason the reporting on Sky seemed very flippant and I just thought to myself that Sky don't even see it as news any more that their soldiers are dying. Its just another stat or filler piece in the news.

I thought about that soldiers' parents and what they now have to live with over the Xmas period.

I saw all this in the past in NI. Back in the 80s there was a lot of killing and you would heard about some part-time soldier out doing his milk-round getting shot. But as soon as they moved on to the weather he was old news (I hope that doesn't sound cold). It was only big events like Omagh that actually shocked you any more.

I think many are now immune to killing and death. As was mentioned above tens of thousands of innocent civilians in Iraq inc women and children have been killed in the war, yet they are rarely thought about.

Do you think the news now is too sanitised? If we were actually to see dead bodies might it shock us into caring again?

[Singh400]

Short answer, yep.

[overkill]

Originally Posted by RMCF

Boycie

I saw all this in the past in NI. Back in the 80s there was a lot of killing and you would heard about some part-time soldier out doing his milk-round getting shot. But as soon as they moved on to the weather he was old news (I hope that doesn't sound cold). It was only big events like Omagh that actually shocked you any more.

I think many are now immune to killing and death. As was mentioned above tens of thousands of innocent civilians in Iraq inc women and children have been killed in the war, yet they are rarely thought about.

Do you think the news now is too sanitised? If we were actually to see dead bodies might it shock us into caring again?

I thought about that as well. Sad to say it's true. Only when a major bomb went off did we get shocked back into awareness of the round robin off death during the troubles.

I think we always have been. If you asked the average person living in London (ie on the ball with events) during the middle phase of the hundred years war what was most on their minds, their business or the body count in Normandy and I think you can guess which one was uppermost.

I doubt very much that the news media could shock us into caring again. In particular as most people feel negatively about Iraq.

[Joe90sDad]

Originally Posted by mep

Terry Lloyd's family may wish to disagree with you on that one.

Like I said, 'most'. Lloyd and many other reporters, who were not embedded with the military, have lost their lives in Iraq.

[boycie43uk]

maybe we get the news to fast now, and its old news in a couple of hours.
and it does seem that its only major advents that we still get shocked at,
i also think sky are getting very flippent with the way they tell the news or dont as it seems.
a couple of text lines running at the bottom of the picture to tell us about a british death, yet maybe saddam will get hanged soon takes 100% of screen time.
boyc