I got an e mail from a woman--I salute you for leaving your name-- in Sweden. Attached was a link to a Swedish newspaper about "a soldier throwing a puppy off the cliff" --I had written about that a couple of hours before her email reached my inbox--
She asked me if I had seen the item, and "how it was allowed to be happening?"
I realized that she had sent it to me because I am married to a man in the US Army. In effect, I had to justify the actions of many military members for the actions of that one (Marine). I then thought about the article I wrote about the abused 6 week old child that was burned, drugged and beaten. As a mother, do I have to defend myself as a mother because there are harmful mothers?
Or a rider that is beating up her horse, do then all riders have to be bad persons?
Pedophilia... are then all males to stand accused of abusing children?
I remember in 2004 when a Swedish TV program was made about people who claimed they could communicate with animals, but then failed to stand up to the test. After that broadcast, I had to defend my abilities what they had failed to achieve, because we were in the same business, even if I hadn't even been asked to join the program. (Later on the camera man called me and said they didn't want me on this particular program because they wanted it to be negative, and I was too skilled... I would have been a counter-balance to their desired negativity.)
It just makes me sad and mad that people cannot understand that evil and stupidity doesn't have any occupation, nationality or uniform. It has human skin, specific addresses, and individual names .
Fight evil, inhumanity, fraud and lies where and when they appear. Combat individual instances of evil individually. It helps no one, and ultimately hurts the cause, to paint everyone with the same broad brush.
This is not Amore!
1 comment:
I have to wonder about the woman who sent you the link, and said "how can this be allowed to be happening". If she meant it in a human sense... fine. How CAN any human do this, or allow it to happen before their eyes.
But, if she meant it more in the term of "how can the US Marines allow this to happen", or "how can the US government allow one of thier Marines to do this"... then I think she misses the point.
What this Marine seems to have done (it is still inconclusive if a puppy was actually harmed, it could be a hoax), was done by an individual. It is abhorent, wrong, and goes against what we in the US military believe in. Indeed, it goes against what the vast majority of Americans believe. But it was one individual and one individual's actions. The US government, or US Marine Corps, no more controls every action and every waking moment of each of its members than does a parent control every waking moment of their adolescent childrens' lives. There are still some moments that are out of the control of anyone other than that individual.
To answer the question of how this could be allowed to happen, is to look into the darkest parts of the soul of an individual, not to look at a group or organization.
Todd
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