Stones, Bombs, and Planes: A Tale of Two Barbarisms

I generally avoid posting images of black/African people that might reinforce racist stereotypes. Occasionally I make an exception to offer some push back.

BE ADVISED: SOME OF THE PICTURES THAT FOLLOW ARE GRAPHIC.

I have always had a difficult time getting my head around the concept of stoning someone to death when we have techniques like "lethal injection" that far more civilized. (Although westerners now associate stoning with Muslims, very few Islamic nations sanction stoning.) But really, how "civilized" is that? Imagine having someone eat their "last meal." Imagine that you have now restrained that person and he is watching you trying stick something in his arm that is going kill him. Now imagine that you are sweating profusely because you really want to do your job, you want to kill him, but after searching his arms for hours you request that the execution be postponed because you could not find a "usable vein"...

So back to stoning...

I came across these ghastly pics over at the Huffington Post.

HP led off the story saying: "On Sunday, Islamic militants stoned a man to death for adultery in front of hundreds of local residents in Somalia." 


Here's how the same event was described over at the New York Post : "In a scene straight out of the Dark Ages, this Somali man accused of adultery was stoned to death by Islamic thugs while horrified villagers were forced to watch."

The Huffington Post deserves credit here for objective balanced reporting that does not invite  stereotypes about Africans or Muslims or "darkness." The problem, of course, is that the New York Post version is closer to American public opinion about Somalis in particular and Africans and Muslims in general.

Americans don't typically consider human bodies obliterated or deformed by "modern" weaponry such as--depleted uranium, M16s, MOABs (see second to last picture below), remote controlled drones, atomic bombs, napalm, just to name a few--as barbaric. And because Americans have low attention spans, we have already forgotten about those 300-500 Somali men, women, and children, massacred by our troops. (But we might remember the movie Black Hawk Down, the mythical version of that tragedy.)

Mass death by modern weaponry is overrated.

So yes, I am vehemently opposed killing people with large stones. But I am equally opposed to killing people with massive projectiles dropped from planes and other "modern" weapons of mass destruction.

Somalia

Afghanistan

Afghans dig graves for victims after an alleged air strike by U.S forces in Gozara district of Herat province west of Kabul, Afghanistan on Feb. 17. A U.S. general traveled to western Afghanistan on Feb. 18 to investigate claims that six women and two children were killed, officials said.

USA

 "The Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) bomb produced in the United States is the second most powerful non-nuclear bomb in the world." Source: Wikipedia

Assorted US military weapons of mass destruction (Source: Wikipedia)

tags: afghanistan, barbarism, Black Hawk Down, crime, death penalty, islam, MOAB, Somalia, stoning, war on terror, weapons of mass destruction