Iraqis Are Not "Abstractions"

Further putting me in a bad mood, the story's first paragraph about the latest bloody debacle in Iraq declared: "The sudden collapse of Iraqi forces in the face of lightly armed insurgents has catalyzed an emotional debate within the U.S. military about a war that, just a few years ago, seemed on the brink of going down in history as a success."

In the wake of recent events, the corporate-owned-and-operated media appears determined to apply its most imaginative legerdemain to convince us of this past "success" while moving to the blame-game mode of faulting President Barack Obama for the current mess.

The mainstream U.S. media still shies away from pointing fingers at war criminals Bush/Cheney et al, whose "decent interval" for getting out of office without a "defeat" on their record was purchased with much blood, both American and Iraqi.

The hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed or wounded during the politically motivated "surge" and in the carnage both before and afterwards can remain, for folks like the neocons at the Post, "something of an abstraction." And the media can avoid mention of the 1,000 U.S. troops killed in 2007 protecting what often amounted to sectarian Shia militias ethnically cleansing Baghdad of much of its Sunni population -- as well as defending the Bush/Cheney legacy.

Yet, for the Post's Jaffe and Maurer, U.S. troops -- unlike Iraqis -- are no "abstraction." And so the writers indulge in the selective grieving over the cost of war. They quote a U.S. Army officer to whom they grant "anonymity so he could discuss his feelings" about the war: "My sadness is not for the Iraqis, but for the wasted effort so many of us gave and bought at so high a price."

American lives, apparently, are the ones that matter.

Remembering Tal Afar

Even before reading the Post's article, I had been getting more and more angry hearing reports that Tal Afar was "changing hands" again. Does Tal Afar ring any bells with you? This ancient city of a quarter-million people, strategically located in northwestern Iraq near the Syrian border, may jog your memory mostly for the many times it has "changed hands" over the past decade or so.

And here it goes again, you think to yourself. Last weekend it fell to jihadist insurgents of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria; on Friday, Iraqi armed forces won back most of Tal Afar, but a battle raged nearby for control of the huge Baiji oil refinery and the airport.

But I remember Tal Afar chiefly for the killing/wounding of an Iraqi family there by U.S. troops on Jan. 18, 2004. It was a small massacre, as massacres go in Iraq. However, for some reason -- perhaps the Post's casual reference to Iraqis being an "abstraction" -- I cannot get out of my head the desperate words of Linda, Willy Loman's wife in "Death of a Salesman":

"He's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. He's not to be allowed to fall in his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a person."

In January 2005, photographer Chris Hondros was embedded with U.S. troops in Tal Afar, then the scene of frequent clashes between U.S. forces and insurgents. As the curfew was coming into force just after dusk, a red car rushed past the patrol, ignoring warning shots. Fearing a suicide attack, the soldiers opened fire.

Inside the car was an ethnic Turkoman family of eight. The parents, Camille and Hussein Hassan, were killed; the five children in the back wounded before the soldiers realized that it was a civilian car. They carried the traumatized children to the pavement and started binding their wounds.

Hondros's photographs of the incident revealed not only the tragedy inflicted upon so many civilians in Iraq, but also highlighted the life-or-death decisions soldiers face under duress. Especially haunting was the picture of the youngest girl, Samar Hassan, crying and spattered with the blood of her parents. The blood on the pavement, her hands, and her face makes this photo an instantly disturbing image.

The U.S. military, which had been hugely successful in keeping such troubling photos out of the public eye, was outraged. Hondros's embedded assignment was terminated. But the image of Samar Hassan made it through.

Interviewed by the New York Times six years later, she explained: "My brother was sick, and we were taking him to the hospital ... [and] this happened ... We just heard bullets. My mother and father were killed, just like that."