After 100 years World War I battlefields are poisoned and uninhabitable

Re:After 100 years World War I battlefields are poisoned and... by aab0 on Friday July 29, 2016 @11:49PM (#12191533)

> I want to state a feeling that I have: that we would have never done this if we respected Laotian people or thought of them as our equals. Only by thinking of them as simple poor brown hill folk could something like this happen.

So, in the comment section about an article about how two countries of white people went to war and dropped so many bombs that a century later some areas are still unusable, you are claiming that the only reason a country of white people dropped so many bombs on another country that a century later areas will still be unusable is because... the other country had brown people?

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Re:After 100 years World War I battlefields are poisoned and... by Theodores on Saturday July 30, 2016 @12:35AM (#12191660)

No, it is about context. The same can be said for Iraq - more ordnance dropped there than in all of WW2 and that is just 2003-2010. In WW1 the arms trade was barely started compared to what we have today. The world is at war against the arms trade profiteers but people talk about race instead.

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Re:After 100 years World War I battlefields are poisoned and... by 55555 on Saturday July 30, 2016 @01:01AM (#12191711)

I don't think it's all about race. That was just one of four adjectives that I used. But fundamentally I think they were (and are) viewed as more "different" from us and so naturally we feel less empathy and kinship. I think something like the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_Massacre would be less likely to happen in a scenario where US troops are fighting a proxy war in Canada.

The points you make about Iraq, war profiteers, and context are all spot-on and very informative. Thank you.

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