Soldier butchered in street in Woolwich

[ryanman]

At the risk of being crucified and I touched on this in the Boston bombing thread these kinds of things are long overdue and to be perfectly honest have been almost predictable for years.
The West has this attitude that somehow our lives mean more is some grand scheme. Well they don’t and we sit around and for the most part live out our lives with little fear of being violently killed. Anybody here know the death toll of innocent people killed in Iraq or Afghanistan? How many wedding parties were crashed by bombs wiping out entire families for generations? When we cover such acts it’s written off if addressed at all as the costs of war or national interest or unfortunate mistakes. Its naïve to think that we as citizens will not pay for the actions we are indirectly involved in under the guise of foreign policy.

Ok, granted, and I do bear this in mind. But when an angry British/US/Australian etc citizen in the middle east actively seeks out and and kills a completely innocent citizen of that country then that is a fair comparison. Not all killing is equal I'm afraid. Some may say that the fact this guy is a solider somehow makes it more legitimate (which is clearly bullshit in this case) but then they can have no such vindication for 9/11 and 7/7 for example. These attacks would only make any sense (yet would still be disgusting and wrong) if they only targeted military and government infrastructure/personnel. But they don't. When justifying killing our innocents by saying that their innocents are killed daily they are missing the point. Our governments taking actions that result in innocent Muslims being killed is wrong. We all know this and try to feel their pain. But then PURPOSEFULLY attacking our innocents (that do not support the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq) is not a like-for-like action. Over one million British citizens marched on the streets of London protesting against the war in Iraq, yet jihadists believe that they are still legitmate targets.