Iraq's unseen violence
The US government and military are preventing the public from seeing
photographs that depict the true horror of the Iraq war
* * Dan Kennedy
* guardian.co.uk,
* Tuesday July 29 2008
Even by the squeamish standards of the American media, the photographic record
of the war in Iraq is remarkably antiseptic. The paradigmatic images are not of
combat or of bodies in the street but, rather, the digital snapshots taken by
US soldiers of Iraqi prisoners being humiliated at Abu Ghraib - that is, a
consequence of war rather than the thing itself.
To an extent not appreciated by the public, the shortage of photographs
depicting the dead and dying is not an accident. This past Saturday, the New
York Times reported on the plight of Zoriah Miller, a freelance photographer
who was banned from covering the Marines because he posted several photos of
their dead bodies on his website. Miller, the Times added, is hardly alone in
being pressured not to show the world anything too graphic.
Questions about war photos are as old as photography itself. More than a
century ago, Mathew Brady and other photographers shocked a nation with their
images of dead soldiers in the American civil war.
More recently, it has become an article of faith on the political right that
grisly images of the Vietnam war - including the famous pictures of a
street-side execution and of a naked young girl running from a napalm attack -
undermined public support and led to the American defeat. Subsequent
administrations have made it increasingly difficult for journalists to cover
war in all its horror.
That effort has reached its nadir during the presidency of George Bush. And
though its roots lay in the White House's desperate attempts to maintain some
level of support for its failed policies, its censorious campaign is now being
waged on behalf of Bush's preferred successor, John McCain. Unpopular as the
war is, it would be more unpopular still if the public could truly see it.
Think back to the early, triumphant days of the Iraq war, leading up to the
"Mission Accomplished" fiasco. War was reduced to a video game, with action
figures racing through the desert and streaks of light aimed toward Baghdad.
Once the insurgency began, the war became so dangerous for journalists to cover
that they became dependent on the American military units with which they were
embedded - a very different scenario from Vietnam, where reporters and
photographers were able to operate with little interference.
More than 4,000 American troops have died to protect their country from Saddam
Hussein's non-existent weapons of mass destruction, but you'd never know it
from the nightly news. In a break with longstanding tradition, the White House
even banned the media from observing the flag-draped coffins of dead soldiers
when they arrive at Dover Air Force Base, in Delaware.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, bloody images of war do not necessarily
undermine public support. I recently had an opportunity to view newsreel
footage from the second world war, and a silent clip from the first world war,
that were astonishingly graphic in their depiction of violence suffered by both
the good guys and the bad guys.
The difference is that the second world war, especially, enjoyed near-universal
popular support. Terrible images of troops felled in a war for survival only
toughened the national resolve. Images of dead American troops in Iraq, by
contrast, would - like those pictures from Vietnam - only serve to deepen
public anger.
Just before I wrote this, I paged through a book of Iraq war photos by Ashley
Gilbertson called Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. Gilbertson, whose pictures have often
appeared in the New York Times, is not one to indulge in violence for
violence's sake. There is as much blood and death in the brief slide show of
Zoriah Miller's work as there is in all 264 pages of Gilbertson's book.
Still, Gilbertson's images are difficult to look at because they are so real.
His is not the Iraq of General David Petraeus, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki
and the surge-emboldened Sunni Awakening. Rather, we see courageous American
troops, terrified civilians and an oppressive, overwhelming sense that it's all
going to end badly. Gilbertson closes with the 2005 Iraqi elections, itself a
bittersweet victory. He, and we, know that some of the worst violence occurred
later on.
As it occurs still. On Monday, at least 53 people were killed and another 240
wounded in separate suicide attacks in Baghdad and Kirkuk. McCain can repeat
"the surge is working" as much as he likes. Iraq remains an incredibly
dangerous and fragile country.
Interviewers frequently ask Barack Obama if he'll admit he was wrong about the
surge, but they rarely ask McCain if he was wrong about the war. In large
measure that is because the American public cannot see the full consequences of
this tragic mistake - a mistake that McCain supported from the beginning.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/29/iraqandthemedia.usa
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