Gawker Headline: Wikileaks Video Demonstrates Conclusively That Innocent People Get Killed in Wars
Ah, the “Little Lady Strut.” This is one of the canned responses often offered by apologists when news is released about some undeniable -- and apparently unnecessary -- mayhem committed by the apologists’ side during wartime. The apologist, faced with the photographed, videoed, or recorded proof (of what he was often vehemently denying earlier), furrows his brow, firms his jaw, hikes up the belt of his pants, and growls, in his best John Wayne/Clint Eastwood imitation, “Well that’s what war is like, little lady. It ain’t pretty. Innocent people get hurt.”
The trick is to frame the response as if other people were objecting to the usual inevitable civilian casualties during wartime, rather than, say, an Apache helicopter blowing away unarmed people who’d stopped to help an injured man.
I suppose it’s possible that there’s some unknown fact that, if revealed, would justify shooting a bleeding, unarmed human being trying to crawl away on his belly, and then blasting someone who tries to help him. Simply copping a patronizing attitude, as this
Gawker headline does, isn’t convincing.
