Just a thought...

[hellison]

Seeing that the shooting that guy debate [1] is still going on on flame made me wonder - if he had turned out to be a bomber, would the majority of the people have even considered argueing about it?

(I've mostly skimmed it, so this may have been brought up there already).

I have my own opinions on it, it always just amazes me to see people who see things in such strict Black and White, Good Thing/Bad Thing etc - and thats on both sides of the argument.

There are always Circumstances, and Context and shades of grey.
Or maybe I see too many shades of grey.
hmm.


[1] Yes I could find a better name for it, but its late and its been a long evening.
And I'm footnoting lj posts. Oh dear.

Comments

[vashti.livejournal.com]

Um. Of course if the guy they shot had turned out to be a bomber, there would have been no debate about it beyond the fringes, because the police would have been right to do so - their intelligence would have been correct, the decisions that brought them to the point where they shot an innocent man would have been correct, the decision to shoot would have been correct. Ergo, there would have been nothing to debate or investigate.

[hellison.livejournal.com]

And of course if he HAD been a bomber and they hadn't shot him, most of the very same people now screaming 'omg why did they??' would now be the ones screaming 'OMG why didn't they??'

Just another bandwagon to jump on...

[vashti.livejournal.com]

Yes, but we can "what if" until the cows come home. The facts remain that the police shot someone dead based on his coming out of a block of flats that some terrorists had been in - a block of flats they didn't even have sufficient evidence to raid, like they did a lot of other places that they had firmer evidence about that week, and which they have still not raided.

[hellison.livejournal.com]

I do understand that - I wasn't really debating the issue itself, primarily because I haven't followed the story closely enough to get the details, more bemoaning the knee-jerk reactions to it of, well, jerks.

And by that I don't mean everyone who was posting, just the ones who would have been screaming the exact opposite of what they're saying now if things had gone differently. If you see what I mean.