The War Photo No One Would Publish

[neverforget]

From the First Gulf War....
Warning! GRAPHIC photos in this link!
http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/08/the-war-photo-no-one-would-publish/375762/

The Iraqi soldier died attempting to pull himself up over the dashboard of his truck. The flames engulfed his vehicle and incinerated his body, turning him to dusty ash and blackened bone. In a photograph taken soon afterward, the soldier’s hand reaches out of the shattered windshield, which frames his face and chest. The colors and textures of his hand and shoulders look like those of the scorched and rusted metal around him. Fire has destroyed most of his features, leaving behind a skeletal face, fixed in a final rictus. He stares without eyes.

On February 28, 1991, Kenneth Jarecke stood in front of the charred man, parked amid the carbonized bodies of his fellow soldiers, and photographed him. At one point, before he died this dramatic mid-retreat death, the soldier had had a name. He’d fought in Saddam Hussein’s army and had a rank and an assignment and a unit. He might have been devoted to the dictator who sent him to occupy Kuwait and fight the Americans. Or he might have been an unlucky young man with no prospects, recruited off the streets of Baghdad.

Jarecke took the picture just before a ceasefire officially ended Operation Desert Storm—the U.S.-led military action that drove Saddam Hussein and his troops out of Kuwait, which they had annexed and occupied the previous August. The image and its anonymous subject might have come to symbolize the Gulf War. Instead, it went unpublished in the United States, not because of military obstruction but because of editorial choices.

It’s hard to calculate the consequences of a photograph’s absence. But sanitized images of warfare, The Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf argues, make it “easier … to accept bloodless language” such as 1991 references to “surgical strikes” or modern-day terminology like “kinetic warfare.” The Vietnam War was notable for its catalog of chilling and iconic war photography; Some images, like Ron Haeberle’s pictures of the My Lai massacre, were initially kept from the public. But other violent images—Nick Ut’s scene of child napalm victims and Eddie Adams’s photo of a Vietcong man’s execution—won Pulitzer Prizes and had a tremendous impact on the outcome of the war.

[AuntPatsy]

1. Horrific, such photos tell the truth in war, how can there be Honor in murdering strangers?

[Kali]

2. good article

thank you for posting

[4now]

3. There is nothing glorious about war

no matter what the recruiters tell you.
I am not trying to be sanctimonious but thanks for posting this reminder of
the other things that we did when we were afraid.

[IronGate]

4. No need for me to view the picture,

I was there, I saw the actual death and destruction.

[calimary]

8. And Dear God, IronGate, how hard we fought to keep you home.

Damn. We marched, protested, held rallies, wrote letters, wrote postcards, signed petitions, sent emails, made phone calls, sent letters-to-the-editor, blogged, lobbied, begged, and NONE of us was heard. MILLIONS protested that damn war. On EVERY continent, as I recall - including Antarctica. Nobody paid attention. Nobody gave our side any face time on TV or radio, and very rarely in print. NOBODY listened. NOBODY had a seat for us at the table where all of this was being discussed and planned. On NO Sunday talk shows. NO front pages. NOTHING. We were deep-freeze buried, silenced, ignored, laughed at, shunned, scorned, called names, accused of all kinds of shit, our patriotism questioned, our love of our country questioned, we were lambasted as traitors and America-haters and enemy sympathizers and Saddam lovers.

But we sure tried.

And in the end WE were the ones who were correct, who called it accurately, who resisted the bullshit and refused to buy in or compromise or concede.

[IronGate]

11. I and my buddies thank you and the millions of citizens around the world for standing up for us.

The ironic thing is, I returned to Iraq at the start of the Iraq War when our Marine Reserve unit was called to active duty, so I did 2 fucking miserable tours in that hell hole.

I'm due to retire from the Marines next year with a nice pension, hopefully the world will hold together and I'm not called to active duty again, I'm sick and tired of war and the effects of it.

[rhett o rick]

14. I appreciate it that you can thank those of us that protested. But I still feel guilt. We didn't

do enough. Thanks for doing what you did and not holding it against us that "we" made you do it. I will always wish I had done more.

[IronGate]

16. Y'all did what you could do considering that the media was touting the Bush 1 and 2 bullshit

and had the American public all fired up for war.
I still feel a lot of guilt for the Marines in my unit that didn't make it back alive.
But regardless, you should feel no guilt and hold your head high for knowing you did the right and moral thing.

[calimary]

20. I do too. It is so discouraging. I dragged my kids to a few anti-war rallies - so they'd start to

taste peaceful activism in real time (my biggest investment in America's future!). We failed. We didn't do enough. We didn't find the key. There was this one monthly horoscope page in Harpers Bazaar magazine that really struck me. Every issue they have a horoscope page and every month's little blurb ends with a very salient quote. I copied a lot of 'em into my quotes file. But there was one in particular - and I don't even know what month or zodiacal sign it was with, but it said "no lock is made without a key." And that just smacked me in the face!!! It's so essential to everything when it comes to problem-solving, and the mentality one should bring to that.

"No lock is made without a key." That has motivated me and kept me going and and kept me hopeful and fired up, and kept me slogging through the muck to continue trying to move ahead in spite of it all - more often than I can count.

[Historic NY]

5. War is war...

hundreds of pictures of the macabre have been sent home from the Civil War to the present, people look, some turn away. Its does not appear to have stopped the belligerents.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

6. I remember that iconic photo of the Highway of Death....

Republicans believe wars are fought to make our people feel good about themselves. This was a slaughter of withdrawing troops already complying with the United Nations order to pull out of Kuwait so Bush Senior was told he should stop the attack or it would be bad PR.

[Mr.Bill]

7. Republicans believe wars are fought

to make money. Nothing else matters, not even winning.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

10. Well, that makes them feel good about themselves.

[Luminous Animal]

12. It was a retreating army and we slaughtered them.

Miles and miles of slaughter.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

13. All because Bush was being called a "Wimp".

[tblue37]

9. The "old Lie": "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori."

Dulce Et Decorum Est
(Wilfred Owen)

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.



They do *not* want the marks to understand what war really is.

[MrModerate]

15. I visited the "highway of death" with a survey crew . . .

. . . about two weeks after this photo was shot. That image was only one of hundreds that could have been taken. The experience affected me profoundly, but didn't lead me to one particular view of war or the other. I already knew it was horrible.

Whether showing this image (or those images) at the time could have made the horrors of war more real to people, I'm not sure.

Nowadays, nothing goes unpublished, no matter how horrific. We have become inured to horror.

I'm not even sure whether "horror" has any meaning anymore.

[IronGate]

17. With great sadness, I confess that I participated in that carnage and it profoundly affected me to

this day.

[babydollhead]

18. here is a hug.

you never ever have to do any of it again.
you are here. you have people here who have been thru many different kinds of hell. have compassion for yourself and for others. you are, in this one moment, just like me. I couldn't go to sleep without telling you that i hear you.

[IronGate]

19. Thank you.

[neverforget]

21. kick for the day crew