At a Distance - Things Are Not the Same

In the post-war movie classic “The Third Man”, Holly Martins the protagonist confronts Harry Lime, while the two are riding Vienna’s giant Ferris wheel, with his dealings in diluted penicillin and with the deaths this has caused. As they look down, the people below appear to them as a sea of dots. Harry replies, “Tell me Holly, if every one of those dots was a hundred dollars, how many dots would you be willing to spend?”

The point here is that distance reduces involvement and allows the viewer the luxury of dispassion. So it is in Afghanistan, where American troops, under the influence of hashish (and maybe stronger drugs) are accused of idly taking the lives of native Afghans, more for sport than anything.

 

I heard of similar instances during the British occupation of Egypt, reported to me by a close friend who was there at the time (coincidentally, the same year The Third Man was made), when members of the RAF would take potshots at Arabs trying to collect spent ammunition and shell cases on the RAF firing range in the Suez canal.