if piles of their corpses present logistical rather than legal problems?
But to say that our soldiers, or some of our soldiers anyway, do not see the Iraqis as humans is not to suggest that they see them simply as objects. Rather, they surely see them as enemies, as "evildoers," as "insurgents," as "terrorists." Such creatures are almost by definition, beyond sympathy, entirely alien, and not just to be randomly harmed, but abused.
Here is a U.S. soldier posing with two Iraqi boys. They are all giving a thumbs-up signal, and one of the boys is holding a sign he is surely incapable of understanding that says: "Lcpl Boudreaux killed my dad then he knocked up my sister!" With some images from this war, we cannot know if, or to what extent, they were posed. This one, however, is clearly a performance and we are the audience. We are supposed to laugh.
And, in a sense, the sign in this photo is certainly true. At least some U.S. soldiers have evidently become so accustomed to killing and torturing that it dominates their thinking. What dominates your thinking, what concerns you, often comes out in humor. It is quite likely that the soldier in this photo has not murdered or raped anyone, but perhaps he has seen such things done by others. Given the nature of our war in Iraq, though, it is entirely possible that he has committed such acts.
Think about the images from Abu Ghraib. Here's one to remind you, one you may not have seen before.
The question we should ask ourselves is not just why our soldiers tortured this man, but why someone took a photo of it. How had such acts become behavior to take pride in, to record as keepsakes? And are a few bad apples really capable of creating such conditions?
A photograph presupposes an audience, someone to enjoy or appreciate it. Here's an image of a young female prisoner in Abu Ghraib raising her shirt as she was certainly forced to do.
Someone expects us to enjoy that as pornography. Instead, it offers a glimpse of a world of unfathomable humiliation and abuse, the very same world that produced the image above of the bleeding man.
If you go to this collection of image galleries and scroll down to the very bottom, you will see a couple of folders labeled "War Trophy Photos." I must leave it to your judgment whether you want to see them or not. I trust you to want to see them for the right reasons. These are images of corpses and body parts mutilated and displayed, in close-up, laid out on a platter for cannibals. These are images that no one should find it easy to view, not even surgeons. But they are part of the true story of what this war is about and what all wars are about.
Many of these images were sent by American soldiers to a website that marketed pornography. Presumably, these were viewed as war pornography. Presumably, they were created by people who have come to love war. And I don't mean people who avoid going to wars and then send other people's children to fight and die or be turned into people who could do this. I don't think Dick Cheney and George Bush flip through these photos in the evening, but I think they have a duty to do so until they can't stand it anymore and bring our troops home.
By "people who have come to love war," I mean soldiers who signed up for college money or adventure and were trained as sociopathic killers.
Recently, in Newsweek, I read a comment from an American soldier in Iraq who mentioned that one of his buddies had run over a family with his tank. Personally, I don't want to live in a society with that in our magazines, but as long as it's happening, I want it printed on the front page, and I want photos with it.
Update: On June 9, soon after I wrote that, I got my wish. The U.S. military killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, took a photo of his dead head, blew it up to enormous proportions, and displayed it in a frame at a press conference. From the way it was framed, the head could have been connected to a body or not. Presumably this was meant to be not only proof of his death, but a kind of revenge for al-Zarqawi's beheading of Americans. The image would fit perfectly in a collection of war trophy photos. Is there any mystery about where rank and file soldiers learn to behave this way?
David Swanson, the Washington Director of Democrats.com and of ImpeachPAC.org, is co-founder of the AfterDowningStreet.org coalition, creator of MeetWithCindy.org, and a board member of Progressive Democrats of America. A former newspaper reporter, he was the press secretary for Dennis Kucinich's 2004 presidential campaign. His website is davidswanson.org.
Copyright 2006 David Swanson
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