The Pictures of War You Aren’t Supposed to See

[kpete]

The Pictures of War You Aren’t Supposed to See


Posted on Jan 4, 2010
AP Photo / Adem Hadei

An Iraqi woman takes her dead son into her arms. The six-year-old was killed on the way home from enrolling for his first year of school.

By Chris Hedges

War is brutal and impersonal. It mocks the fantasy of individual heroism and the absurdity of utopian goals like democracy. In an instant, industrial warfare can kill dozens, even hundreds of people, who never see their attackers. The power of these industrial weapons is indiscriminate and staggering. They can take down apartment blocks in seconds, burying and crushing everyone inside. They can demolish villages and send tanks, planes and ships up in fiery blasts. The wounds, for those who survive, result in terrible burns, blindness, amputation and lifelong pain and trauma. No one returns the same from such warfare. And once these weapons are employed all talk of human rights is a farce.

In Peter van Agtmael’s “2nd Tour Hope I don’t Die” http://www.amazon.com/2nd-Tour-Hope-dont-Die/dp/1934334073/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1262576066&sr=1-1 and Lori Grinker’s http://www.amazon.com/Afterwar-Veterans-Conflict-Lori-Grinker/dp/0970576870/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1262572896&sr=1-1 “Afterwar: Veterans From a World in Conflict,” two haunting books of war photographs, we see pictures of war which are almost always hidden from public view. These pictures are shadows, for only those who go to and suffer from war can fully confront the visceral horror of it, but they are at least an attempt to unmask war’s savagery.

“Over ninety percent of this soldier’s body was burned when a roadside bomb hit his vehicle, igniting the fuel tank and burning two other soldiers to death,” reads the caption in Agtmael’s book next to a photograph of the bloodied body of a soldier in an operating room. “His camouflage uniform dangled over the bed, ripped open by the medics who had treated him on the helicopter. Clumps of his skin had peeled away, and what was left of it was translucent. He was in and out of consciousness, his eyes stabbing open for a few seconds. As he was lifted from the stretcher to the ER bed, he screamed ‘Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,’ then ‘Put me to sleep, please put me to sleep.’ There was another photographer in the ER, and he leaned his camera over the heads of the medical staff to get an overhead shot. The soldier yelled, ‘Get that fucking camera out of my face.’ Those were his last words. I visited his grave one winter afternoon six months later,” Agtmael writes, “and the scene of his death is never far from my thoughts.”

more:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_pictures_of_war_you_arent_supposed_to_see_20100104/

[gratuitous]

1. I am confident

That we will be treated to a full explanation for (1) why those photographs are hidden away where we can't see them; (2) why it's really a good thing that people are blown to pieces coming home from school; (3) what a bunch of little pansies we are for not wanting this to continue; and (4) why it's necessary to keep doing this.

Oh, and we need sources!

[juno jones]

8. And how all this suffering is perfectly acceptable collateral damage.

I believe it was Madeline Albright who said a decade ago that our goals in Iraq were worth the deaths of half a million children. Sometimes I get the feeling she posts at DU.

[gratuitous]

12. Oh yes!

And while the actual deaths of our putative allies' children are "acceptable," our citizens' possible or potential deaths are not.

[Hannah Bell]

27. our citizens' potential deaths from terrorists are so intolerable that

new security measures are needed; otoh, our citizens' potential deaths from unemployment & social service deaths are sad but unavoidable fallout of wall-street profit-taking.

"yes, it is worth it".

[malaise]

28. Ding ding

Some citizens are apparently more important than others :sarcasm:

[MrMickeysMom]

34. Go with that feeling...

... and if you're lurking, Madeline, REALIZE that for every single good thing you did on behalf of this country, it was completely and utterly erased by that statement.

I hope it haunts you every night and day.

[Soylent Brice]

2. DUP, FYI

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7391360

would otherwise K&R if i hadn't already on the earlier one.

[Solly Mack]

3. K&R

[SunriseStorm]

4. Department Of Peace - Making More Sense With Each Passing Day

Thank you Dennis Kucinich!

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

5. Thanks for posting that picture. War needs to be taken out of the abstract. K&R

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

7. kick

[anonymous171]

6. Too sad for words...

[Mari333]

9. every US citizen NEEDS AN EYEFUL OF WHAT WE ARE DOING

KNR

[Nikki Stone1]

13. Absolutely.

K & R

[juno jones]

10. K&R! n/t

[Mari333]

11. k

[gratuitous]

14. Just a little early afternoon kick

For stuff we aren't supposed to see.

[Uncle Joe]

15. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, kpete.

[Orrex]

16. I'll tell you this much:

If an occupying force injured or killed my children, I would spend the rest of my days resisting that occupying force and extracting whatever form of revenge I could manage. No amount of rebuilt infrastructure or deposed totalitarian regimes would earn my forgiveness or make me forget.

I don't kid myself to think that this would be a rational response, but with this perspective in mind I can understand what might motivate a person to fight against an army nominally in the country to "help" the people.

[Soylent Brice]

17. i completely agree.

your first paragraph explains exactly why we're not "winning their hearts and minds".

kind of hard to do that when killing your kids is just "collateral damage".

[Bigmack]

18. Yup... again, your first para says it all.

Me too.

And the USMC taught me how to blow shit up.

I got an "A" at booby-trap school. Victor Charlie gave me a graduate course.

[patrice]

21. The "rebuilt infrastructure (and)or deposed totalitarian regimes" would make Revenge just soooo much

sweeter.

[varelse]

22. It may not be a rational response

but it's a very natural one, and far from rare.

[BrklynLiberal]

19. THIS is how we are "spreading democracy"???????????????????

[bertman]

20. Recommend. Keep this one going.

[patrice]

23. That's very hard to look at . . . so profoundly sad.

The poor little guy just wanted an ordinary boy's life.

[Jamastiene]

24. Notice the pro war faction on DU never bothers

to post in threads with pictures (or even look for that matter) of children either blown to bits or crying and screaming from the pain if they lived through it.

Yet, in other threads, they spend a lot of time sitting around brainstorming with each other, excuses for why they think it is "ok" to kill a child.

I would say that each of them should be forced to look at these pictures, but my less naive/"realist" side is 99.9% certain they would enjoy it.

[orbitalman]

25. Extremely Tragic. I must tear myself away. n/t

[The Wizard]

26. My most vivid and disturbing

image of Vietnam is a group of children that were hit by an American Claymore mine. About six of them were screaming in pain and bleeding, and two were being put into body bags.
War leaves a trail of victims who have no connection to the conflict. When a political leader starts a war predicated on lies for political and material gain it is immoral and criminal. There are certain political leaders who belong on the end of a rope. The war criminals among us should be looking over their shoulders every minute of every day.
For the most part war is not the answer and should always be the last resort, not the first option.

[boston bean]

29. .

:cry:

[Djarun]

30. War on terror? Sounds like WE are the terrorists...

[Javaman]

31. When we allow "fear" to rule us, we become what we fear.

When the U.S. eventually collapses in upon itself, it won't be pretty.

[winyanstaz]

32. I think this needs to be front page on every newspaper...

It's time all of us Americans looked at what is being done in our name every single day.
It should be on every billboard and tv station.
There should be no place to hide our faces for what we have done.
I think its time to drag the war mongers to the front lines.
This is not what I voted for.
EVER!
This is not a just or legal war. Why the hell are we still there?
My God we have become the terrorists and the evil-doers and all that is bad upon the earth.
We deserve the scorn of the Earth and the karma of allowing this to go on and to have even happened in the first place.
This breaks my heart. Every single picture I see of the wrong we have done will haunt me to my grave.
Where are the youth of America today? Where are the people? Where are the crowds screaming..???
NO MORE WARS!! BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW!!!

[MissDeeds]

33. K&R

Killing and warmongering. And for what? :cry: