Iraq War Grief Daily Witness (photos/essay) Day 115

this diary is dedicated to all who suffer because of war and other disasters

Today I have selected several images from both New Orleans and Iraq, and include some of my own thoughts about the reality of death and our collective inability to fully confront it. I believe that grief and witness are essential, but fear that we may not be able to fully grieve, or support those who must, if we isolate ourselves from what is really happening.

cross-posted at DailyKos, Booman Tribune, European Tribune, and My Left Wing.

twelve (12) images, an essay, and a poem below the fold

I’ve been thinking about this topic for quite some time, though my thoughts have been scattered and incomplete. They still are, and will likely remain so.

But yesterday a most thoughtful diary by Els, which I am glad to see is currently at the top of the recommended list, helped me to organize my thoughts a bit more.

If you haven’t read Els’ diary yet, I hope you will find the time to do so, including the complete comment thread.

Last month I attended a conference, Accompanying the Dying: End of Life Care, and Judy Dobson, the speaker, opened with a discussion of how schizophrenic we are as a culture when it comes to death. Put simply – everyone dies but no one admits it.

That unhealthy split between reality and fantasy is being played out right in front of us in two separate, but related, death-filled events – Iraq and New Orleans.

The contrast between photo coverage of the war in Iraq and the flooding in New Orleans, as depicted the US vs. elsewhere, is beyond conspicuous. It says everything about how we, as a culture, deny death.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Most of the photos from New Orleans are apparently being taken by American stringers for the wire services and photographers for US papers. The photos from Iraq are being taken by Iraqi stringers for the same wire services. In both cases, the images are readily available.

But few, if any, US outlets carry anything but the most obtuse/abstract renditions of death, if they show it at all.

Photo editors for US outlets seem to prefer:

upbeat or other “human interest” images that could have been taken anywhere, or that support a particular theme or narrative consistent with conventional wisdom

Gabriel Whitfield (top) and his wife, Melissa Kennedy, managers of the Best Western Hotel in New Orleans, Louisiana, pose for a photograph at the bar of the hotel. Whitfield spent five frightening nights in the dark with a shotgun protecting the building from looters in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
(AFP/Omar Torres)

U.S. Army soldiers from the Third Armored Cavalry Regimen, Tiger Squadron, Apache Troop, walk over the demolished front gate of a house in order to search for weapons and insurgents in Tal Afar, Iraq, 150 kilometers (93 miles) east of the Syrian border Saturday, Sept. 10, 2005. U.S. and Iraqi troops swept into the insurgent stronghold of Tal Afar early Saturday, conducting house-to-house searches and battering down walls with armored vehicles in a second bid to clean the city of militant fighters.
(AP Photo/Jacob Silberberg)

– – –
long-distance and landscape shots which have the dual effect of being “impressive” for showing a huge scope of damage while at the same time being “benign” because whatever suffering is rendered is very remote, and easy to turn away from

Portions of New Orleans remain covered in floodwaters from Hurricane Katrina, September 9, 2005. The Bush administration moved to quell a political storm Friday by replacing the embattled head of emergency operations along the U.S. Gulf Coast and rescue workers in New Orleans ended recovery efforts to focus on collecting bodies left by Hurricane Katrina.
REUTERS/David J. Phillip/Pool

Smoke rises after an explosion during fighting in the northern Iraqi town of Tal Afar September 11, 2005. Iraq closed its border with Syria on Sunday to stop what it calls foreign fighters entering the country, as a U.S.-backed military operation to wipe out suspected insurgents in the city of Tal Afar continued. Picture taken September 11, 2005.
REUTERS/Namir Noor-Eldeen

– – –
abstract art-school images, often involving visual cliches and non-sequitors All that’s lacking is an artist’s statement, a name for the exhibit, and some price tags.

Cargo containers are scattered about in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina Saturday, Sept. 10, 2005 in New Orleans.
(AP Photo/David J. Phillip, Pool)

U.S. Army Pfc. Eric Mantorana who serves in the Third Armored Cavalry Regimen, Tiger Squadron, Bandit Troop, escorts Iraqi men in a Bradley Fighting Vehicle as they are released after initially being detained and then later cleared by the U.S. Army in Tal Afar, Iraq, 420 kilometers (260 miles) northwest of Baghdad, Monday, Sept. 12, 2005. U.S. and Iraqi troops conducted searches in this historic city as Operation Restoring Rights continued.
(AP Photo/Jacob Silberberg)

– – –
heroic icons, mostly uniformed folks working in the trenches, but again with an emphasis on maintaining a safe distance between the viewer and the hero’s ‘task’ (in other words, “Let’s show people searching for dead bodies, but don’t show any actual dead bodies…” or “I need some soldiers posing with their weapons…”).

Members of the Oklahoma National Guard open a door of a house during a search for survivors in New Orleans September 11, 2005. All the dead from Hurricane Katrina had not yet been recovered, and staggering destruction littered block after block of New Orleans, but there were signs of hope in and around the nearly empty city.
(Carlos Barria/Reuters)

British soldiers stand guard at the site of an attack in the southern Iraqi city of Basra. A British serviceman was killed and three injured in an late-morning bomb attack Basra province, the Ministry of Defence said without giving further details. The attack came six days after two British soldiers in an armoured four-wheel-drive vehicle were killed in a roadside bombing near Al-Zubair, southwest of Basra city.
(AFP/Essam al-Sudani)

– – –
some that can only be filed under “truly bizarre” or “downright offensive”

A chick sits on the chest of an Iraqi Army soldier from the Third Brigade, and pecks at a carton of cigarettes during a pause in the search for weapons and insurgents in Tal Afar, Iraq, 150 kilometers (93 miles) east of the Syrian border Saturday, Sept. 10, 2005. U.S. and Iraqi troops swept into the insurgent stronghold of Tal Afar early Saturday, conducting house-to-house searches and battering down walls with armored vehicles in a second bid to clean the city of militant fighters.
(AP Photo/Jacob Silberberg)

A model wears a look from the Imitation of Christ spring 2006 collection, Friday Sept. 9, 2005, during Fashion Week in New York. The quote on the back of the dress, ‘Here Lies Vera, God Help Us,’ are in reference to a photograph taken of words on a sheet covering a victim of Hurricane Katrina.
(AP Photo/Diane Bondareff)
– – –

I’m not looking for a gross vicarious experience. I already witness plenty of death – whether it’s played out over hours, days, or weeks; or when it’s time to transfer the shrouded body onto a stretcher and send it to the morgue.

I’m also not trying to shove something in other peoples’ faces, and I understand that all of the elements that I’ve noted play a role in helping us to appreciate the full story.

But when it comes to death, if photo editors continue to act as if they’re working for Walt Disney, and if we continue to let them, we’ll never understand what it means, or what we can do when it happens. We won’t be prepared for something that we’ll all have to face, like it or not.
– – –

Brothers Kadum, right, and Hassan, left, react as the body of Iraqi police colonel Ammar Ismail Arkan is transferred to a hospital morgue, in Baghdad, Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2005. Colonel Arkan was killed in clashes with unknown gunmen.
(AP Photo/Mohammed Uraibi)

The body of a flood victim is tied to a telephone pole as it floats in New Orleans on Saturday, Sept. 10, 2005. Efforts continue to locate bodies and survivors 12 days after Hurricane Katrina hit.
(AP Photo/Steve Senne)

The Pardon
by Richard Wilbur

My dog lay dead five days without a grave
In the thick of summer, hid in a clump of pine
And a jungle of grass and honey-suckle vine.
I who had loved him while he kept alive

Went only close enough to where he was
To sniff the heavy honeysuckle-smell
Twined with another odor heavier still
And hear the flies’ intolerable buzz.

Well, I was ten and very much afraid.
In my kind world the dead were out of range
And I could not forgive the sad or strange
In beast or man. My father took the spade

And buried him. Last night I saw the grass
Slowly divide (it was the same scene
But now it glowed a fierce and mortal green)
And saw the dog emerging. I confess

I felt afraid again, but still he came
In the carnal sun, clothed in a hymn of flies,
And death was breeding in his lively eyes.
I started in to cry and call his name,

Asking forgiveness of his tongueless head.
..I dreamt the past was never past redeeming:
But whether this was false or honest dreaming
I beg death’s pardon now. And mourn the dead.