The horrors of war

I read this post from John on AMERICAblog yesterday and was very disturbed by the images. Go see them at your own risk.

This is the gist: US soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq have been snapping pictures of everyday "life" in those countries, as they see it, which means horrible images of bodies blown up, charred, chopped up, and of body parts that for the most part are unrecognizable.

The pictures are then sent to a website and uploaded for the world to see. Unfortunately, the website is a porn site. It looks like the soldiers wanted to gain free access to the pictures on the site, so the owner told them to send him pictures from the war zone and he would let them access the site for free.

Now, I say unfortunately because the controversy will likely focus on the fact that it's a porn website, that these horrible pictures are being exchanged for pictures about sex, and I don't think we should focus on that. This morning I happened to listen to AirAmerica Radio and they were interviewing the owner of the website, who defended his choice by saying that these pictures aren't shown anywhere else, because the media doesn't care, and so he decided to put them up so that at least people could gain a better understanding of what it means to be in a war zone.

I agree. Who cares if it's a porn site and if the soldiers do it to get porn pictures? The way I see it, they are at war, they can have any 'hobby' they want, as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else (and this is an amateur website, so people post their pictures willingly, it's not like they pay the models for the pictures.) What I believe is worth focusing on is that the pictures are real, and that they are horrible. And therefore, our soldiers are seeing horrible things day in, day out. That's what worries me.

I took a look at the pictures and was so disturbed I had to stop. The interviewer this morning said he'll never be able to get them out of his head. That's true, but what about the soldiers who actually LIVE them all the time? What are those images doing to THEIR minds? What happens to them when they come back? Do you think they can just forget them? By the little I've seen, it's impossible to forget stuff like that. I can't imagine if instead of a picture I saw the real thing. For months or years. That's probably why I'm for bringing the troops home. They've seen enough. For several lifetimes probably.

It is also unfortunate that the guys actually 'pose' in the pictures Abu Ghraib style. This shows us once again that what happened in that prison WASN'T an isolated incident. The soldiers are actually trained to act that way, to treat the prisoners and suspects (and now the dead) that way.

Yesterday, I was ticked off by the fact that they were posing in the pictures, but then I started thinking that, besides because they are trained to be tough and heartless, they are probably doing that as an outlet for their frustration, their fear, their anger. As a way of breaking down the power of those images, like when a horror movie frightens you and you laugh it off to avoid feeling too terrified.

Maybe the soldiers are, consciously or not, working through their inner demons, and this is a way of playing down those demons. Maybe the only way they have been able to figure out. I feel for them.

I can't imagine the horrors they see.