A thoughtful post darkbeaver. I think the thing that caught people about that puppy, was that the puppy had nobody to act in it's interest. The three morons who tortured the puppy and the peace of human dreck who threw the puppy over the cliff should all have been dragged to the ground and beaten to within an inch of their lives, maybe several times. I can't express the contempt I have for those who tortured and killed that puppy but my contempt has nothing to do with my feelings for the human victims of war.
I feel like you do and everyone else who has any real feelings. The point I'm making ,and I think you understand it is the puppy has no emotional, national or human baggage therefore it is safe for us the empathize and in that state relieve ourselves of a burden. We are quite rightfully enraged by a senseless brutal act upon a defenceless puppy. At the same time we know and can find footage of thousands of innocent defenceless animals including baby seals and baby chickens and baby calves being destroyed in cruel manners. So intellectually what is different about the puppy and the soldier? And what is gained by our righteous indignity? Is this episode substituting for something else because as I'v said intellectually it is impossible to differentiate this death and those of millions of other animals at human hands? How much does our anthropromorphizing the puppy in this case mask deeper emotions of the day? What does the helpless infant nature of the animal mean to us in this case and not the others?