withoutsanctuary.org

[FreddyD]

I like so many others who have posted on this sight, was moved by the numerous and gut wrenching photos on the movie, but all in all I would say I was not shocked by them. I can clearly remember many other gruesome photos of blatent cruelty by human beings who are not that different from you and I. Right away, one thinks back to the photos of the soldiers torturing the prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison and the smiles on many of their faces as they were doing it. So while it is nice to think that this unjustifiable cruelty was a one time anomaly, I fear that it is in fact, still alive and well in the world today.
Another thought that comes to me as I watch this movie is the realization of the lengths that people will go to, to defend their way of life and long held beliefs. We see the South doing anything and everything to preserve what they believed was the correct order of the world and to protect what they viewed as their heritage and history. Is it any wonder that the North was not able to win the war of Reconstruction. The North's main goal during the war was to preserve the union and when that was accomplished, they lost their main motivation. But as we have seen here and in the War in Iraq, winning a war does not change a way of life or culture, which can take hundreds of years. While many of us would like to view Reconstruction and its bloody results as a part of history, I feel it is still a current event and a work in progress.