The Pictures of War You Aren’t Supposed to See
The Christ
By Chris Hedges
January 04, 2010 "Truthdig" - - 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” and Lori Grinker’s
“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.”
“There were three of us inside, and the jeep caught fire,” Israeli
soldier
Yossi Arditi, quoted in Grinker’s book, says of the moment when a
Molotov
cocktail exploded in his vehicle. “The fuel tank was full and it was
about
to explode, my skin was hanging from my arms and face—but I didn’t
lose my
head. I knew nobody could get inside to help me, that my only way out
was
through the fire to the doors. I wanted to take my gun, but I couldn’t
touch
it because my hands were burning.” [To see long excerpts from
“Afterwar” and
to read an introduction written by Chris Hedges, click here.]
Arditi spent six months in the hospital. He had surgery every two or
three
months, about 20 operations, over the next three years.
“People who see me, see what war really does,” he says.
Filmic and most photographic images of war are shorn of the heart-
pounding
fear, awful stench, deafening noise and exhaustion of the battlefield.
Such
images turn confusion and chaos, the chief element of combat, into an
artful
war narrative. They turn war into porn. Soldiers and Marines,
especially
those who have never seen war, buy cases of beer and watch movies
like
“Platoon,” movies meant to denounce war, and as they do so revel in
the
despicable power of the weapons shown. The reality of violence is
different.
Everything formed by violence is senseless and useless. It exists
without a
future. It leaves behind nothing but death, grief and destruction.
Chronicles of war, such as these two books, that eschew images and
scenes of
combat begin to capture war’s reality. War’s effects are what the
state and
the press, the handmaiden of the war makers, work hard to keep hidden.
If we
really saw war, what war does to young minds and bodies, it would be
harder
to embrace the myth of war. If we had to stand over the mangled
corpses of
the eight schoolchildren killed in Afghanistan a week ago and listen
to the
wails of their parents we would not be able to repeat clichés about
liberating the women of Afghanistan or bringing freedom to the Afghan
people. This is why war is carefully sanitized. This is why we are
given war’s
perverse and dark thrill but are spared from seeing war’s
consequences. The
mythic visions of war keep it heroic and entertaining. And the press
is as
guilty as Hollywood. During the start of the Iraq war, television
reports
gave us the visceral thrill of force and hid from us the effects of
bullets,
tank rounds, iron fragmentation bombs and artillery rounds. We tasted
a bit
of war’s exhilaration, but were protected from seeing what war
actually
does.
The wounded, the crippled and the dead are, in this great charade,
swiftly
carted off stage. They are war’s refuse. We do not see them. We do not
hear
them. They are doomed, like wandering spirits, to float around the
edges of
our consciousness, ignored, even reviled. The message they tell is
too
painful for us to hear. We prefer to celebrate ourselves and our
nation by
imbibing the myth of glory, honor, patriotism and heroism, words that
in
combat become empty and meaningless. And those whom fate has decreed
must
face war’s effects often turn and flee.
Saul Alfaro, who lost his legs in the war in El Salvador, speaks in
Grinker’s
book about the first and final visit from his girlfriend as he lay in
an
army hospital bed.
“She had been my girlfriend in the military and we had planned to be
married,” he says. “But when she saw me in the hospital—I don’t know
exactly
what happened, but later they told me when she saw me she began to
cry.
Afterwards, she ran away and never came back.”
The public manifestations of gratitude are reserved for veterans who
dutifully read from the script handed to them by the state. The
veterans
trotted out for viewing are those who are compliant and palatable,
those we
can stand to look at without horror, those who are willing to go along
with
the lie that war is about patriotism and is the highest good. “Thank
you for
your service,” we are supposed to say. They are used to perpetuate the
myth.
We are used to honor it.
Gary Zuspann, who lives in a special enclosed environment in his
parent’s
home in Waco, Texas, suffering from Gulf War syndrome, speaks in
Grinker’s
book of feeling like “a prisoner of war” even after the war had ended.
“Basically they put me on the curb and said, okay, fend for yourself,”
he
says in the book. “I was living in a fantasy world where I thought
our
government cared about us and they take care of their own. I believed
it was
in my contract, that if you’re maimed or wounded during your service
in war,
you should be taken care of. Now I’m angry.”
I went back to Sarajevo after covering the 1990s war for The New York
Times
and found hundreds of cripples trapped in rooms in apartment blocks
with no
elevators and no wheelchairs. Most were young men, many without limbs,
being
cared for by their elderly parents, the glorious war heroes left to
rot.
Despair and suicide grip survivors. More Vietnam veterans committed
suicide
after the war than were killed during it. The inhuman qualities
drilled into
soldiers and Marines in wartime defeat them in peacetime. This is what
Homer
taught us in “The Iliad,” the great book on war, and “The Odyssey,”
the
great book on the long journey to recovery by professional killers.
Many
never readjust. They cannot connect again with wives, children,
parents or
friends, retreating into personal hells of self-destructive anguish
and
rage.
“They program you to have no emotion—like if somebody sitting next to
you
gets killed you just have to carry on doing your job and shut up,”
Steve
Annabell, a British veteran of the Falklands War, says to Grinker.
“When you
leave the service, when you come back from a situation like that,
there’s no
button they can press to switch your emotions back on. So you walk
around
like a zombie. They don’t deprogram you. If you become a problem they
just
sweep you under the carpet.”
“To get you to join up they do all these advertisements—they show
people
skiing down mountains and doing great things—but they don’t show you
getting
shot at and people with their legs blown off or burning to death,” he
says.
“They don’t show you what really happens. It’s just bullshit. And they
never
prepare you for it. They can give you all the training in the world,
but it’s
never the same as the real thing.”
Those with whom veterans have most in common when the war is over are
often
those they fought.
“Nobody comes back from war the same,” says Horacio Javier Benitez,
who
fought the British in the Falklands and is quoted in Grinker’s book.
“The
person, Horacio, who was sent to war, doesn’t exist anymore. It’s hard
to be
enthusiastic about normal life; too much seems inconsequential. You
contend
with craziness and depression.”
“Many who served in the Malvinas,” he says, using the Argentine name
of the
islands, “committed suicide, many of my friends.”
“I miss my family,” reads a wall graffito captured in one of
Agtmael’s
photographs. “Please God forgive the lives I took and let my family be
happy
if I don’t go home again.”
Next to the plea someone had drawn an arrow toward the words and
written in
thick, black marker “Fag!!!”
Look beyond the nationalist cant used to justify war. Look beyond the
seduction of the weapons and the pornography of violence. Look beyond
Barack
Obama’s ridiculous rhetoric about finishing the job or fighting
terror.
Focus on the evil of war. War begins by calling for the annihilation
of the
others but ends ultimately in self-annihilation. It corrupts souls
and
mutilates bodies. It destroys homes and villages and murders children
on
their way to school. It grinds into the dirt all that is tender and
beautiful and sacred. It empowers human deformities—warlords, Shiite
death
squads, Sunni insurgents, the Taliban, al-Qaida and our own killers—
who can
speak only in the despicable language of force. War is a scourge. It
is a
plague. It is industrial murder. And before you support war,
especially the
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, look into the hollow eyes of the men,
women
and children who know it.
Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent who covered
conflicts
for two decades in Central America, Africa, the Middle East and the
Balkans,
writes a column published every Monday on Truthdig. His latest book
is
“Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of
Spectacle.”
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24321.htm
See also
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2459.htm -
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2604.htm -
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14069.htm -
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2608.htm
Paladin
That's the best description of war I've ever read. The
only thing it doesn't touch on is the nearly paralyzing
fear a combat soldier faces what he expects will be his
own death. I served one tour in Vietnam, I was
11-bravo, infantry. I went down in three tunnels as a
volunteer. To crawl on hands and knees into those
dark, fetid tunnels (they buried their dead down
there), Tunnel Rats had to develop a fatalistic
acceptance of whatever might come. Embracing the fear
isn't quite accurate; you just put the fear aside and
do what your buddies expect of you, telling yourself
that whether you live or die, It don't mean nothing.