The face of death

It is often said that a picture is worth a thousand words. So why I ask myself, during a war that has been turned into such a media spectacle one wonders if it isn't just another sick Hollywood reality TV stunt, do we see no pictures that illustrate the impact of 300,000 horribly beweaponed troops on 24 million poorly equiped civilians, half of which are under the age of 18 (due to previous wars killing off so many of the older population)?

In the past years we have become accustomed to ever more graphic and disturbing depictions of the true horrors of warfare. Even of that modern "precision warfare" that one might think leaves no blood, no innocent victims, no fields of green turned slimey red by the blood of brave and frightened soldiers. In todays recreations of war there are no more strapping boys all dressed up in nicely pressed uniforms hardly breaking a sweat as they mow down the distant, unseen enemy in post WWII romantic war dramas. We know there are US troops out there doing what they are trained to do - kill. We know they are now running scared of every civillian that doesn't have both hands in the air and is using anything more substantial than a bicycle to flee their smoldering cities. We know civilians have been killed, over a thousand now. We know many more will be killed, and tens if not hundreds of thousands will be injured and forever traumatized by the forcible invasion and overthrowing of their country.

All this we know, we read, we hear, but some how it doesn't sink in for many people, just what is going on. Its over there, in another country where the people, well they aren't people like us, they are those Ay-rabs with towels on their heads, right? They don't really know much better, everything will be okay once they have seen the light, our light, and taken the pledge. Yes, its easy for our media, government and the unthinking supplicants that follow them, to de-humanize the enemy when we have not seen and felt how they suffer - just like we do in the face of terrible deeds that cause the deaths of many innocent civilians.

So it was with some surprise that this morning I finally came across a news site in New Zealand that has been cataloging war images from Iraq that have largely slipped under the mainstream radar. The site was referenced from SF Chronicle writer, Mark Morford's daily column which today contained a stinging critique of the santized war coverage where dead civilians are now just collateral damage. So insignificant the US doesn't even count them, or want to count them. Isn't it disgusting enough that civilians are dying as a consequence of this state authorized overseas killing spree? Now we are saying we don't even care enough to tally the dead, who are still being conveniently swept under the carpet of collateral damage along with buildings, bridges, roads and other non-human infrastructure. Shouldn't the dead civilians in Iraq be every bit as important, newsworthy, heroic, and honoured as those of 9/11? Is America Inc. telling us that they just don't count? Why? For what reason? I can't answer those questions and I find it disturbing to even think about the answers, which I find are shameful to everything that America is supposed to stand for, and this war probably means it will never again have a chance to stand for those things, if it really ever did in the past.

The pictures are not for the faint of heart, as death generally isn't, but they do illustrate that a picture is worth a thousand words - every single one of them says more than I've ever managed to type on the subject of why this war is evil, unecessary and a disgrace to civilized society. They show the true face of death, no cosmetic reconstruction of a recently deceased loved one, done up in Sunday best and resting peacefully. Nor even that other acceptable view of death, the faceless, anonmyous dead cocooned in sheaths of black body bags waiting for the last flight home. No, here we see dismembered men, women and children. Pathetic frail bodies wrapped in rags huddled in a coffin as an anguished mother looks on overcome with grief. Bloody faces, twisted remains, and skulls caved in, all the hope and dreams of the living and free crushed from them.

What has become of the American people that they are now so divorced from reality that over 1000 civilians deaths are just acceptable collatoral damage, a "necessary evil" that we must endure to remove weapons of mass destruction, that probably never will be found and probably never would have been used. When all the time the US is raining down indiscriminant cluster bombs, napalm and countless billions of dollars of munitions that somehow are not achieving mass destruction in our campain of "shock and awe". Just what do people think we are killing these civilians with? A fireworks show? Harsh language? No, its ton after ton after ton of flesh shreding lead, steel, depleted uranium, shrapnel, and high explosive and the consequences are plain for all to see.