Oh boy. Yeah, @onelineinthesand it really does.
Especially because this isn’t really examples of them “dealing with casualties.”
The first one is Steve reacting to a rescue mission where a junior member is spiraling into a depression out of guilt that she couldn’t save everyone.
The second is Tony trying to guilt the team into signing away the basic human rights of an entire group of people because someone finally made the death toll of Sokovia sink in for him by bringing up the fact that “hey, there were American kids in that city too.”
Steve has an incredibly bad perspective for a peacetime officer. His whole perspective is that they try to save as many people as they can, but ultimately people die in the course of their ultimate goal: ending the “war”.
And I think the people who replied were a little bit confused because this is actually TONY’S line, not Steve’s.
This has BEEN Tony’s mindset, ever since the first Iron Man movie.
Captain America -The Winter Soldier:
And even in Civil War, he’s “winning the war” before it starts by urging everyone to back a document that strips anyone who is enhanced of their basic human rights and gives the governments the ability to completely overrule all due process if the target is enhanced.
Additionally, the “peace time officer” comment only really applies to a privileged rich man in a peaceful first world country.
Sokovia was at war. It’s specifically pointed out multiple times that they are, and have been, in a state of unrest.
Just because America is not currently at war, doesn’t mean the rest of the world is at peace. It’s this kind of dangerous assumption that leads to actual refugees being turned away at the borders of safe countries because they are “making up excuses” to immigrate.
It’s this particular America-centric view that’s been Tony’s downfall since the first Iron Man movie.
As long as his weapons aren’t being used on American soldiers, he doesn’t care what becomes of them.
Tony doesn’t care at all about the death toll on Sokovia - which is why he suggests that they escape and simply blow up the city and everyone on it.
An idea which your “bad peacetime officer” shuts down hard.
To Tony, every life in that city is expendable for the sake of winning the overall fight against Ultron.
Sure, he’ll help rescue people from buildings when Cap tells him, but he’d much rather focus on “kicking ass” against the Ultron bots.
And the only time we see him actually feeling bad about the death toll from Sokovia is when he’s confronted about the One American Casualty™ that happened during the battle.
His entire speech in Civil War is him projecting his feelings and revelations onto the other Avengers. The fact that innocent people get hurt when they’re careless is something the rest of them are well aware of, and have been trying to avoid from the start.
Hell, let’s just look at how Tony deals with a fight in a crowded city versus how some of the others deal with it.
He shows reckless disregard for nearby civilians, is carelessly firing live explosives and his repulsors right beside a crowd, and levels a multi-story building by smashing Hulk through it, bringing thousands of tons of rubble to street level in the most dangerous way possible, without even checking that the streets below are clear.
Hell, the HULK shows more empathy for the nearby civilians who were running and hurt than Tony does.
(Because they don’t matter. They’re not American. The most important thing is that Tony needs to win the fight against Bruce.)
On the other hand, let’s look at some of the combat from the others in city situations:
Natasha is calling warnings to people and carefully navigating narrow streets in an appropriately small vehicle. She does most of her pursuit on foot, and uses her fists and tasers to lower the risk of collateral.
One of Steve’s foremost concerns is for the people, both inside and outside of the train: Getting the pedestrians to safety. Getting the train brought carefully to a stop. Keeping rubble from hurting anyone inside when they smash through a wall. Making sure that there’s at least help waiting for everyone who was onboard before rushing off to the next emergency.
Steve even dismisses any personal hesitations or grudges he might have against the Maximoff twins in favor of saving as many innocents from the collateral as possible - there is no “fight” to be “won” in his mind. There’s only innocent people who need to be saved. His fight can wait.
Steve, Natasha, and Sam have three massive airships to bring out of the sky and completely destroy before they wipe out a few million people in the name of Project Insight. And they have to do this in the middle of Washington DC.
They all risk their own necks to take the ships out, and take care to aim every one of them into the water - the only place where the human population is basically zero. This puts them all at risk of drowning or going down with the ship - something that is very clearly a PTSD-level traumatic experience for Steve and Sam in particular - but they do it anyway because they’re not going to risk letting these ships hit land and kill innocents.
Now let’s look at the worst case scenario on Steve’s side:
The whole team is working to stop a terrorist group from releasing a deadly disease into a densely crowded city.
The terrorists don’t care who they kill - they’re blowing things up and driving trucks into crowds and gunning down guards.
This isn’t a fist-fight with the Avengers.
The terrorists want to kill as many innocent people in this city as they possibly can, and will accomplish that through whatever means necessary.
Steve’s team are all working small and fast, and with mainly hand-to-hand combat, trying to reduce the potential risk of crossfire hitting nearby civilians while the terrorists are specifically going out of their way to attack and hurt the innocents around them.
When the terrorists resort to poison gas, the team works to disperse it. When the terrorists resort to guns, the team strikes fast and hard, and keeps it contained. When the terrorists try to unleash a deadly disease, the team gets the disease vial back at the risk of their own lives.
Then the terrorists resort to military-grade explosives.
This is it - the worst case scenario for the team. No matter how careful you’re being, no matter how skilled or powerful you are, no matter how much combat training you have under your belt…the enemy will occasionally choose the nuclear option.
And you won’t be able to do anything to stop them.
This is what Rumlowe does.
He gets them close, then makes his final jab at Steve and detonates enough C4 to level the marketplace.
Wanda’s first action is to contain the bomb - not only to protect Steve, who she could have easily bubbled a shield around - but to keep the detonation from killing the hundreds of people gathered around them and collapsing the foundations of any of the nearby buildings, killing more.
At this moment it’s about far more than “don’t let Steve get killed by this bomb” - it’s a matter of making sure that some psychopath’s attempts at killing them don’t get anyone else caught in the crossfire.
She’s surrounded on all sides, so her only choice for relocating the actively detonating explosive that she’s slowly losing her grip on, is to throw it straight up and try to clear the skyscrapers before her powers give out on her.
Unfortunately, she loses her grip before it’s completely clear, and the bomb destroys part of a building.
*Note, this is a good five seconds after the initial detonation, and there is STILL enough kinetic force left in that bomb to take out an entire floor of the building. This was not a small explosion in any sense of the word, and it’s a miracle she was even able to hold it that long.
Wanda immediately looks horrified at this, because she realizes that there were likely people inside that building - people who would have been hurt or killed by the explosion.
She doesn’t need to see the bodies, or have it rubbed in her face that these were human beings with families before she cares about the consequences of this, because she was NOT “too busy kicking ass” to realize that there was a risk of collateral due to the crowds.
She is well aware that an explosive hitting a building can kill people - she lived through that scenario herself.
She didn’t toss it into the building on purpose to simply “get rid of it.”
The whole time she was trying to get it clear of everything, to reduce or eliminate the civilian casualties that could result. She knew she couldn’t just throw it a few feet above everyone’s heads and have everything be fine, because she had no guarantee that those buildings would be empty.
But in this one scenario, even her best attempt couldn’t completely cancel out what the terrorists had set in motion, and there are still eleven deaths as a result of their bomb.
(The news report shown later actually lists that more than just the eleven Wakandans were killed in the incident, but the news only focuses on the eleven people that Wanda failed to save from the bomb. That’s what we call “twisting the story.”)
In every one of these situations above, the Avengers are constantly aware of the people around them - the collateral damage.
All, that is, except for Tony. His only thought is “how do I destroy this building without getting sued” which is why he purchases the build site a few seconds before smashing Hulk through it but doesn’t bother to check that the streets below are clear.
It’s why Tony needs Charlie Spence’s mother to make a point of rubbing it in his face that “my son is dead and I blame you for it,” before he even realizes that innocent people died during Ultron’s attack on Sokovia.
During a battle, Tony’s main focus is always protecting himself or taking out the enemy. Bystanders are an afterthought, if he even realizes they are there at all.
(See the party scene in IM2, for example.)
The other big issue is that Tony is incapable of looking at a bigger picture than just “winning the fight.”
(See the whole plot line of Civil War.)
Steve tells Wanda they can’t just roll over and give up if they weren’t able to save someone, because if they do that, there’s going to be even more loss of life in the future.
First responders can’t always save everyone.
But imagine if every time a doctor or a firefighter or a search and rescue team worker didn’t get there in time - imagine if they just quit. Imagine if a rehab center worker or an animal rescue worker just walked away every time they found a person or animal that was just too far gone to help, regardless of what they tried. Imagine if a cop stops an active school shooting, but can’t get to the gunner before he takes out one final victim - imagine if they quit the force.
Steve is telling Wanda that quitting isn’t a solution. It just adds to the problem.
If they don’t have her with them on the next mission, then they have nobody to stop the train. Nobody to redirect the poison. Nobody to watch their backs. Nobody to physically contain the bomb for the crucial few seconds that it takes to reduce what was easily going to be several hundred casualties down to a mere eleven.
One less rescue worker isn’t going to prevent casualties - if anything, it’s going to increase them.
Tony’s argument for accountability is laughable at best, because after months and months of pretending that what he did in Sokovia and Johannesburg and everywhere else he’s left a heap of bodies in his wake was A-okay, he suddenly realized that one American kid was killed as collateral in that otherwise expendable third-world-country, and suddenly he wants to entirely shut the Avengers down, and put tracking chips on all his enhanced “teammates,” so he won’t have to feel guilty over killing someone who “mattered.”
Acting like Steve is some mindless war-obsessed soldier is not only highly disrespectful of the armed forces and veterans, but completely ignores everything that’s been laid out in movie canon.
Steve was ALWAYS incapable of sacrificing lives for “the greater good” or “the bigger purpose.” It’s why he went after Bucky’s squad when the military planned to leave them all for dead because it wasn’t worth the risky rescue mission. It’s why he disagrees with Project Insight, even when everyone else (yes, Tony included) was pushing for it to be implemented to protect the “real” innocents from the criminals who hadn’t shown themselves to be evil yet.
Hell, it’s why he doesn’t want to kill Vision until they’ve exhausted all other solutions to slow down Thanos without ending the synth’s life.
It’s like Dr. Erkstein said about Steve in The First Avenger… “not necessarily a good soldier…but a good man.”
The real difference that you’re ignoring between your initial gifs is that Steve is a man who cares about every life lost, ally and enemy alike, and is hurt whenever there are any casualties:
THIS is a man dealing with caring about a collateral casualty for the first time in his life.
This is a man who has not even realized that people have died as collateral in all of their other fights until just now.
A man who can look Wanda dead in the face and tell her that they need to be aware that people like Charlie Spence DIED in Sokovia - ignoring the fact that she lost her twin brother and a good portion of her country’s population in that very battle.
All Tony knows is that he was guilt tripped for one American who was killed accidentally in Sokovia, and so he’s going to grill the whole team as if they were just as ignorant of the fact that people died as he has been, and demand that they pay for it. He thinks that he has the moral high ground as “the only one to realize that people who MATTER were killed,” and is lording that over the others in the form of forcing them to submit to the Accords.
Him, conveniently, not included.
(And again, that “I must win this war, consequences and collateral be damned” mentality of his comes to rear its ugly head.)
You aren’t comparing a war-time officer and a peace-time officer in these gifs.
You’re comparing a first responder and front line soldier - someone who does his best to save or spare every life in every situation - to a man who builds weapons of mass destruction and doesn’t think that he’s hurting anyone when he pushes the button because he doesn’t have to personally watch them die.
All he sees is a little number on his screen, indicating a new high score.
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