BAGnewsNotes

Najaf

(As a near end of the year note, I wanted to properly introduce, and formally recognize Chris Maynard for his valuable contribution to this site.  As a professional photographer, Chris lends a practiced eye to this new genre of photo analysis and interpretation.  From 1993 to 2005, Chris freelanced for The New York Times, and spent some of that time doing photo editing.  He has been sharing this space with me since October, and I wish to officially, if belatedly, welcome him, and thank him for all his effort and insight.  -- Michael Shaw)

(click for full size)

by Chris Maynard

Earlier this week, Iraqi forces took control of the province of Najaf, south of Baghdad, marking the first time the United States has turned over that responsibility to national troops. (Two other provinces have already been given over by Britain and Italy.)  Although the public was not permitted to watch, they put on a parade for military and foreign guests, complete with the flowers we heard about back in March of 2003. This time they were plastic, and affixed to new military vehicles instead off being joyously strewn before the liberators. All roads in the city were closed before the festivities began.

As dog and pony shows go, it seemed like a good one. Inside a local stadium, commandos demonstrated their karate moves and kicks, and a police officer in plain clothes acting as a terrorist was taken down by, naturally, an Iraqi anti-terrorist squad.

The highlight seemed to be the moment when members of a group of the commandos pulled live frogs from their pockets and bit their heads off, followed by another soldier who sliced open the stomach of a live rabbit and  proceeded to take bites of the organs. The lapin du jour was then passed around the squad. (This seemed to be a throwback to the days of Saddam Hussein, when his road and television shows sometime included the same demonstration, with the addition of snakes, cats and dogs. Popular taste transcends political boundaries.)

Off to itself on one side was a small group of civilians, holding framed photographs of deceased family members who had been police officers. As American policy continues its deadly game of "Who's on First?", we see very few pictures of the families of Iraqi uniformed casualties. Here they are mute, bystanders seemingly making no demands except perhaps "Please remember us."

When Mr. Bush and Mr. Rumsfeld made their publicity trips to Iraq they basically stayed for lunch and then left. Given their responsibility for the Iraqi deaths as much as for the American forces one might think they'd want to stop in at a local field hospital to press some flesh, even if there were no votes available. They didn't. Perhaps they were never really sure themselves who was fighting whom. The relatives in this picture probably also have no idea who killed their loved ones, but they do know they didn't start the battle. Their sadness lies in their utter helplessness.

It's hard to recall any photo at all of Iraqi forces after their initial wounding or death. Their families obviously don't disappear. In this case, we have no idea why they showed up for this ceremony at all. Since it's a closed audience, they're not being used as tools, like sitting next to the First Lady at the State of the Union address. There are no signs, no buttons, no sashes. Although news stories usually don't give them more than a brief mention, there have to be an awful lot of them.

Lost fathers, husbands, brothers, sons. It's hard being a footnote.

(image: Christoph Bangert for The New York Times.  December 2006.  Najaf. nytimes.com)

Reversion To Form (Or: Showing Us The Gates)

Hands up?

It's been an ugly week in Washington as the Administration, exploiting the holiday period, has returned to the delusional "Stay The Course/Victory" scenario that brought on their repudiation in the mid-term election last month.  Bush's undisguised preoccupation with a troop surge, and his near total regression in his annual year-end press conference yesterday demonstrates the truly fantastic depth of pathology at play.

If the first hint of political recovery following the election was the firing of Don Rumsfeld, followed by the blunt, realist assessment of the quagmire by replacement, Bob Gates, the new Defense Secretary is also a focal point in the reversion to form.  With Bush ordering a troop increase before Gates has left a fingerprint at the Defense Department, Bobby is already looking more like another Colin Powell than the Rumsfeld antidote.

It's been hard to look at the political pictures this week without disgust and sadness.  It's possible that the latest incarnation of "Bush Gone Wild" is strictly temporary, and that "Let's Roll" reruns will disappear quickly once the Congressional season begins.

Still, I can't look at the Gates swearing in pics without plenty of anxiety.  In the shot above, marrying the camera angle to Bush's political agenda, I just keep seeing Gates with his other hand up also.  I mean, It's one thing to shoot down Poppa's recommendation team, but to take hostages?

Of course, there is no zero sum game when it comes to morale.  Talk about pulverizing the mental state of an organization.  Besides the cost and demoralization of the war itself, Bush's latest attempt to tie down the military -- for the next thirty years, or so -- can't help but elicit some pretty long faces.

And then, regarding Gates, again, there's also the "third grade class picture" feeling here:  "Now Bobby, just stay in your seat until we call on you."

Here's the worst of it, though -- and it points up my naivete when it comes to man's true capacity for depravity:  Just two days ago, I thought the smirks were history.

Hopefully, it'll all turn out to be a bad hangover, but from now through the holidays, the denial punch bowl is slosh-full of kool-aid, and its back to the ever-lovin' war.

(image 1 & 2: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters. December 18, 2006.  Pentagon.  Via YahooNews.  image 3: Mandel Ngan/AFP. December 18, 2006.  Pentagon.  Via YahooNews.)

Short Handed?

Before I saw the news this morning, I was hoping to downshift a bit.  Given how serious its been around here lately, I was planning some waggishness, perhaps knocking off some revisions to the Administration's holiday card.

Still, if Rove says the new strategy isn't coming till January....

For regular readers, you know how much I appreciate the picture that carries a larger editorial ring.  You don't need a class in visual literacy to wonder about what's happening above the fold on today's NYT front page.  (He's the scan.)

The shot above, although tied to an article about Grand Ayatollah Sistani and Iraq's religious politics, is spread over four columns juxtaposed with the two column headline regarding Bush's plan to expand the U.S. armed forces.  Regardless of the denials in the lead article, does anybody doubt the move foreshadows the so-hinted "troop surge," and a longer-term escalation of our involvement in Iraq?

Of course, I could be overly reading in.  At the same time, this image -- of morgue workers placing a coffin on top of a vehicle in Baghdad -- is not tied to any particular event.  As significant as the lead story is, as large as the image is, and as available as it is for free association, it's almost too easy to see the photo making comment on the troop build-up, saying:

more hands = more coffins

and/or:

more troops = more death.

(image; Ali Jasim/Reuters.  Baghdad. December 19, 2006. Via YahooNews.)

Post-Denial

(full size here)

From the beginning, I have used the metaphor of a binge to describe the Administration's compulsion to invade Iraq.  Because it's part of a cycle, you can't have a binge without a morning after.

Of course, its one thing when "abandon" occurs once in a while, as a form of release.  It's something completely different, however, when that behavior is necessitated, heightened and prolonged as a neurotic process in a weak individual -- or a weak organization.

If, for months now, the Administration's wall of denial has been slowly cracking, it's just in the past seven to ten days, or so, that large pieces are finally giving way.

I find this shot of Cheney in the Oval Office -- posted December 7th to the TIME White House Photo Blog -- really remarkable.  In the past month, many of you have sent me messages and links, in some form titled: "The Smirk Is Gone."  In this case, Cheney is so transformed, he doesn't even look like the same person.

Truly, it's a shot I won't forget.  It captures Cheney as the lone figure in the Oval Office, just steps from Bush's so-called "Resolution" desk.  The vapor on the glass indicates just how cold the atmosphere is outside.  As well, the clouding is a reminder of the stress of maintaining the insulation. More significantly, it's the first time I've seen him completely unguarded and thoroughly disarmed.

For a long time, I thought Cheney would escape scrutiny for twisting the intelligence, whipping up the hate, and bringing on the war.  Whether he's ever formally held to account however, this image (in its possibility; in its "morning after") insures he's already been measured -- and he knows it.

Marked Men

I was interested in this slightly fuzzy, slightly presumptuous article in Sunday's NYT Mag, titled "The Vanishing."  Among other things, it attempts to explain why absolutely no one is concerned about Bush's sudden loss of authority. 

Here's the explanation:

The recent election feels like something more intimate than a personnel change. It feels like the beginnings of an escape from a twisted relationship.

...

Bush has governed as he promised to — with the kind of phony-demotic cocksureness that many people like in pickup-truck commercials and think of themselves as embodying. When he let it be known that he didn’t “do nuance,” it was an invitation to say: “Good. Neither do we.” But this banty self-assurance — our self-assurance — appears not such a great trait when it leads you into a bloodbath in Iraq. The feeling circulating since the election is relief — relief that this unflattering mirror is a bit closer to being taken away. It should not surprise us that this feeling is as strong among those who supported the president as among those who did not.

I don't know who the author is speaking for when he says Bush reflected "our" cocksureness and banty self-assurance.  Does someone writing for The New York Times expect "us" to do anything but laugh out loud when he cites people who like pickup-truck commercials as his comparison audience?

Still, let me stick to the main point, which is Bush's complete loss of authority.

If, in fact, the entire country desperately wishes to disassociate itself from Bush, what are the implications?  More specifically, to what extent does the authority of the government, and everyone in it, go down the drain with him? 

That's where this image comes in.  This shot appeared a few days ago on TIME's White House Correspondents Photo Blog.  Viciously demeaning, it shows General Pete Schoomaker, Chief of Staff of the Army; Admiral Mike Mullen, Chief of Naval Operation; General Michael "Buzz" Moseley, Chief of Staff of the Air Force; and General Jim Conway, Commandant of the Marine Corps at the Pentagon scouting their spots for a photo op right after briefing Bush on the situation in Iraq. 

Talk about being tarnished with the big brush.  Just for the task of briefing Bush on the quagmire (or, at least, playing themselves in the TV dramatization), the intimation is that these men, like four stooges helplessly prostrated to the phony one, hardly know their own names.

(image: Christopher Morris VII for TIME.  December 2006.  time.com)

TIME 2006 Person Of The Year: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. (No?)

You?

TIME's '06 Person of the Year is You?  I mean, Me?  I mean You?

What a cop out.  I'll tell you who they wanted to pick -- but didn't have the chutzpah.  For weeks, TIME has been obsessed with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as their Person Of The Year.

As TIME writer Scott Macleod notes in the introductory paragraph of last week's  "75 minute" interview with the Iranian President, this sit down was TIME's second with Ahmadinejad  "in just the past three months."  (...Okay, so either there's not a whole lot of presidential business to do in Tehran these days or you guys are being used!)

That's not the best of it, though.  Check out the article's promo headline:

Maybe the media is just too pathetic to be analyzed anymore.  (And, maybe the American Idol winner should also be automatically nominated for a National Medal of Arts.)  Either way, "You" was a lot safer choice than actually getting married to the secret boy friend.

So, out goes Ahmadinejad.  Out goes the nasty speculation about the flip-side of America's empire-building and the perpetual need for an over-glorified uber-villain.  Out goes all that nasty chatter (from "You 2.0,"  by the way) about the delusional side of America's fundamentalist instinct and the need for an over-glorified, antagonistic religious infidel.  And out goes even more gnashing and grinding about the elevation of these bad boys as a form of self-fulfilling prophesy.

So AH ends '06 merely as a runner-up.  Still, as the chief beneficiary of the neocon's make-over of Sunni-Shiite relations, and a skillful gamer in the massaging of western media, I was on the edge of my seat over how TIME was going to frame Mahmoud as  POY.

Specifically, I was wondering how they would do the cover.

Knowing how interested they were, I can't believe there wasn't a specific image already in mind.  Would they have highlighted him as the singular "everyman," like they ultimately did in his 2006 People Who Mattered profile?  Would that have been the cover shot?  Or, were they contemplating a slightly foreboding painting, like the '79 treatment of AH's revolutionary inspiration, the Ayatollah Khomeini?

If they really had the balls, though, they would have gone with The BAG's recommendation.  I mean, TIME did use a "Rabbi" shot from Iran's so-called Holocaust conference to accompany the interview referenced above, but only in the most oblique, I'd call it "yellow-bellied" way.

I say to TIME, thanks for the honor, but you blinked with "You."  You were angling to do it, you were teasing to do it, you should have done it.  And, in doing it, you could have gone all the way -- by recognizing Ahmadinejad for his true calling, as one part "evil-doer" creation, and the other part, a well-skilled political and racial P.T. Barnum.

Short of naming Bush the POY for his historic one-year descent, perhaps photographing him in bed with Nancy Pelosi, or Barney Frank even, you had the opportunity to show Ahmadinejad in his finest form.  I mean, you blew the chance to showcase your boy in the midst of the be-all, end-all of photo ops, lauded by some of America's most commensurately ultra-extreme, including white supremacist David Duke, and this handful of loving, immaculately dressed, and wonderfully photogenic anti-Zionist Jews.

... But then, you can only do "You" once.  The way things are going, however, Mahmoud will probably be even bigger next year.

(hat tip: Leo)

(image: Hossein Fatemi/Fars News Agency. farsnews.com)