Iraq's War Porn

An artist should keep a human skull on the desk as a constant reminder of death, of the need to -- in the words of a currently popular country tune -- live like you were dying. A peace activist should keep a photo in his or her wallet of a small Iraqi child torn to pieces -- a constant reminder to live like others are dying.

The trouble is that we find it almost unbearable to look at such images. We believe the war would end if the corporate media showed such images, yet we turn our faces away if they're placed in front of us; even more so, if they happen to be images of torture or of soldiers enjoying humiliating Iraqis. Worst of all are the gruesome images that soldiers have created themselves in this new digital age as war trophies.

If such images were in our wallets, we wouldn't want them to give anyone the impression that we took some sort of sick pleasure in seeing Iraqis blown apart. Yet some of those images have come to us over the Internet from U.S. soldiers who evidently found exactly that pleasure in taking and posting them. As hard as we find it to look at the images, we find it a hundred times harder to try to think our way inside the minds that could do such a thing. We're afraid that, once there, we couldn't freely leave.

We know, of course, that the parents of a murdered child will never be free of the horror, that the soldiers who did it will never forget, and that the people those soldiers live with when they come back home will not be unaffected. To properly address claims that some wars are good wars and that the worst deeds of war are performed by "bad apples," we have to have a clear picture of what war is, including the worst of it. If we leave out an understanding of the worst of war, all of our thinking must be distorted.

Therefore, look at this picture.

Did you look? Those are children who, as likely as not, were running and playing in the months before our government launched a war on the basis of lies. I don't know how those particular children died, but most of the deaths in this war, like all modern wars, are civilian ones, many the result of bombing. This is what "collateral damage" looks like.

Now look at this image.

These are mild images. I'm going very easy on you. This child is alive, but wounded --quite probably wounded psychologically as well. Does the woman holding this child look grateful and liberated? Does she look like she will have an easy time forgiving the people who did this? Why do I write "the people who did this"? Why can't I be honest and write "us"? The United States government launched this war, making us responsible for everything that happens in it.

This image is far more powerful than Edvard Munch's "The Scream."

I don't know what happened, but I know that this is a picture of unbearable rage. I've looked at many images like this one in which, even if I have no way of learning the details, war is presented far more powerfully than could be done in words.

Here's someone with enough years ahead of him to forget and forgive.

But think how hard it will be for him to do so. Then think how easily we will forgive ourselves for not having done more to prevent this war or end it sooner. Who will have the easier time, and should it be that way?

There are stories in our media now about U.S. troops killing civilians -- men, women, and children in cold blood. Sometimes these killings are described as motivated by revenge for Iraqi hostility and ingratitude. But who told our soldiers that the Iraqis would be grateful for being invaded, shock-and-awed, and occupied? Who spread that lie? Not the Iraqis.

And who told our soldiers that it was acceptable to kill the "hadji" (the term they appropriated in a racist way for Iraqis)? Who taught our young men and women to place bags over Iraqi heads?