I still absolutely stand by what I said about Rigby (and I'm sorry to his memory to have brought him up, but there's a lot of overlap between people who support Blackman, and those who namedrop Rigby with a degree of regularity as some form of rallying totem), the distinction exists that Blackman had a duty of care of sorts towards his victim. Not only is it wrong that Blackman did harm to his victim, he was the one supposed to protect him.
I was going to stay out of this as I don't think our opinions on what Blackman did are all that far apart (we both agree that it was a war crime under international law, although there is probably some disagreement on whether it was murder or manslaughter under British law).
But the equivalence with the murder of Rigby is crazy and you don't seem to have any intention on stepping back from that so I can't help myself.
In particular the specifics of the 'duty of care' argument you make. As citizens we all owe an implicit general duty of care not to harm our fellow citizens. I guess if you left it at that you could argue for some form of equivalence in that in both cases a duty of care was not carried out and somebody died. But the law is quite clear that the sanction an individual faces depends not only on the outcome but on the extent to which the duty of care was breached and the circumstances in which that breach took place.
In terms of the extent of the breach I cannot see a great deal of equivalence. For me I see it in terms of the distance of departure from the expected duty of care. A civilian (which Rigby was when he was murdered) has absolutely no expectation of being killed by one of his fellow citizens in an unprovoked and premeditated attack, let alone in the manner that Rigby was killed. To be a victim of such an act is entirely unforseeable. Whilst I do not in any way condone or excuse Blackman's actions, if you are a soldier in a war-zone then whilst you would expect your enemy to adhere to the Geneva Convention the possibility of him departing from that is clearly possible, particularly if your own side has not been 'playing by the rules'.
In terms of the context of the breach there is even less equivalence. One took place on a civilian street, the other took place in a warzone. Rigby was a man who had done nothing wrong killed by two people who had had nothing wrong done to them. The Taliban fighter was somebody who had done a great deal of wrong (if not individually then by proxy by the force he was fighting for) killed by someone who at first hand had seen a great deal of wrong done to his colleagues.
So that's the more 'theoretical' argument out of the way. In more general and emotive terms I cannot see how you can see any equivalence to an entirely innocent man being run over and having his throat cut on a London street to an already grievously wounded soldier, whose side had made a practice of fighting a brutal asymmetric war, being shot by soldier who had been bearing the brunt of that warfare.
I think that Blackman did wrong and should be punished. For what it is worth whilst I think the verdict was correct under the law as it stands, for me British law should be changed to mirror International law where a soldier's mental state is irrelevant except in the most extreme circumstances, in which case Blackman would have been found guilty of murder. But the attempt to suggest there was some form of equivalence between his actions and those of the killers of Rigby is bonkers. At best it is misguided, at worst it provides succour to terrorists (although I accept that it is unlikely that they are making a habit of reading RAWK!).
When I read about what Blackman did I get a feeling of 'there but for the grace of God go I' - both for him and for his victim. War is hell and awful things can happen to, and be done by soldiers. I certainly don't get the same feeling when I think about the killing of Rigby.
