BAGnewsNotes

Iraq Civil War #10 - Day 44

Like the image I posted back on March 27th, two days after Maliki declared war on the Mahdi, what lends the most poignancy to a situation we have otherwise grown numb to are pictures that are as this elemental.

In the latest de-evolution in the unrecognized Shiite civil war, American forces -- with the support of troops from the U.S.-installed, pro-Iranian government  -- have so knocked the shit out of Sadr City that a mass exodus would surely take place (similar to the exodus from Baghdad and other Iraqi cities that nobody seems to be reporting much about) if only the people, now trapped and starving, could get out.

This woman's hands gripping onto a truck while waiting for food supplies to be distributed by Iraqi soldiers not only offers a powerful window on Sadr City, the personality, expression and adornment of those hands is an anguished and detailed portrait of an individual as well.

accompanying article: Aid Officials Urge Relief For Baghdad Slum (Reuters via NYT)
BNN Iraq Civil War thread
NYT Pictures of the Day, May 8 (nytimes.com)

(Photo: Petr David Josek/AP. May 2008. Sadr City. via nytimes.com)

Blowing Up The Surge

When it's all said and done (sometime within the next hundred years), the most redundant image of the Iraq occupation could well turn out to be the razed car carcass.  At this point, however, what could possibly distinguish one more crippled hulk from another?

In the former case (besides the fact it's an ambulance that took the hit), the method of infliction is worth noting.  The roof of the car is caved in because it was damaged from the air by one of three U.S. Hellfire missiles.  The specific view, however, is actually peripheral to the main target which Iraqis identify as a mosque and the American military described as a “criminal element command and control center.”

What everybody does agree on, however, is that the building next-door was a hospital, which made it that much more convenient to treat the twenty-eight people injured, including a group of kids who were collecting cans to salvage.

American Bombing Of Sadr City: Like Qana, But Without The Attention?

Now that the U.S. -- desperate to protect the Green Zone, and avoid a Saigon-style evacuation -- is actively bombing Sadr City, what is the difference between what the Americans are doing, and what the Israeli's did in Qana during the '06 Lebanon war?

Above is yesterday's photo of two-year-old Ali Hussein, pulled from the bombed rubble of his home, who died shortly after in the hospital.  It's the shot which could have, would have and otherwise should have woken up all the sheep and cast a fiery and pin-pointed attention on the urban carnage inflicted on an overcrowded, poverty-stricken, urban Baghdad slum by U.S. fighter bombers.

So I ask, what is the difference -- in morality, shock effect and potential political fallout -- between the shot from Sadr City above, and the near-identical scene below that rocked the world, shamed the Israelis, and burned Qana into the world's consciousness ... besides the lack of media access and attention?

About a photo, about Iraq (Kansas City Star)
Several believed dead in US air raids in Baghdad (AFP)

(image 1: Karim Kadim/AP.  April 29, 2008. Sadr City, Baghdad.  via Kansas City Star.  image 2: ©Tim Fadek.  July 30, 2006.  Qana, Lebanon.  Used by permission.  Please seek permission before republication.)

Afghan Update: A Running Metaphor

(widen browser for full size)

I wish this image was more difficult to analyze (and was less of a metaphor for the current state of the GWOT)...

U.S. takes on Afghanistan.  U.S. takes eye off ball.  President Karzai reduced to mayor of Kabul.  Afghan soldiers scatter at national military parade during weekend assassination attempt on "the mayor."

Karzai Escapes Attack in Kabul by Gunmen (NYT)

(image: Massoud Hossaini/Agence France-Presse—Getty Images.  April 7, 2008.  Kabul.  via nytimes.com)

How A War Out-Of-Sight Becomes A War Out-Of-Mind

Dana Milbank's Washington Sketch this past Thursday is a painful, if must read. 

Clearly and simply, the article describes how a war out-of-sight can quickly become a war out-of-mind.  More specifically, it details how the Pentagon is visually censoring military funerals at Arlington, even when the family has given permission for media coverage.

Painting the situation surrounding Wednesday's "open" funeral of Lt. Col. Billy Hall, who left behind two children and two step-children, Milbank writes:

Journalists were held 50 yards from the service, separated from the mourning party by six or seven rows of graves, and staring into the sun and penned in by a yellow rope.  Photographers and reporters pleaded with Arlington officials.

"There will be a yellow rope in the face of the next of kin," protested one photographer with a large telephoto lens.

"This is the best shot you're going to get," a man from the cemetery replied.

The first photo above lays out the problem in simple geography.  The second photo, which accompanied the second story below -- dealing strictly with the funeral, and not the media angle -- features a telephoto shot of Lt. Col. Hall's family receiving a ceremonial flag, his children obstructed by a pole.

What the Family Would Let You See, the Pentagon Obstructs (WAPO - Milbank)
'Warm, Gracious' Marine Laid to Rest: Fifteen-Year Veteran From Seattle Served In Iraq, Afghanistan (WAPO)

(images: Gerald Martineau - The Washington Post.  April 23, 2008. Arlington Memorial Cemetery. washingtonpost.com)

General Love

I was wondering how long it was going to take before Frank Rich returned from "vanquishing Hillary land."  His piece Saturday was spot-on, outlining the invisible disaster formerly known as the Iraq War.  In light of his narrative, I find yesterday's NYT WIR story previewing General Petraeus's testimony to Congress this week as simply mind-blowing.

Having enabled the ethnic cleansing of a country; pacified warring Sunni tribes through flat-out bribery (with no resulting structural change and no end in sight); and then having claimed credit for a (only fractionally successful) so-called surge leveraged on the back of al-Sadr's cease-fire, here was the NYT yesterday effectively promoting the General as a potential vice-presidential or even presidential candidate!  (And not only that, but the article actually cites "loathsome buzz" from liberal bloggers as escalating the wave!)

In an admittedly brilliant accompanying slide show, The Times produces a series of photos of military rock-stars through modern U.S. history captured at their telegenic best.  (The MacArthur shot is priceless, nailing the incestuous relationship between war biz and show biz.)

But it's this Petraeus shot, paired with the article, which concerns me.  Like the other photos, it equates the camera's love with presidential worthiness.  But, what happened to the irony?  On the threshold of a critical appearance before Congress, following the near Shiite meltdown of Babel two weeks ago, it's apparently 2003 all over again.

Setting the table for an accounting, I look at this grand entrance and all I see is fawning.

Tet Happened, and No One Cared (Frank Rich/NYT)
Generally Speaking (NYT Week In Review)
Political Generals (NYT slide show)
The Petraeus Insurgency (BAGnewsNotes)

(Jim Young/Reuters.  Washington. September 2007. nytimes.com)

4000

5 years
4,000 U.S. military dead
Between 82,349 - 89,867 Iraqi civilians lost to violence

The reason Michael Kamber's photo -- appearing in the NYT Picture of the Day gallery, March 6 -- is so powerful is because it's the perfect metaphor.

Our people might look like they can breath easier and have it mostly in hand, but the teetering, tinderbox structure of the country; and the unworkable, band-aid, "made-in-our-name" government; and the temporary "pay 'em to stand down for awhile" strategy that's is suddenly not looking so elective anymore represents a guaranteed, if slow-motion train wreck.

While the media and the political establishment refuses to look at the overall picture, the photographer can't miss it.

(And doesn't that middle section of the building, in particular, look almost skull-ish?)

Read the Rolling Stone article which sets the record straight.  (And while you're there, check out Danfung Dennis's photo gallery, including the completely subtle photos of cooperation/collusion between the U.S. military and the Mahdi Army and Shiite militia-infested Iraqi National Police.)

NYT Pictures of the Day (March 6, 2008)
Iraqi civilian losses (iraqbodycount.org)

(image: Michael Kamber for the New York Times.  2008.  caption: At Combat Outpost Carver, near Salman Pak, an Iraqi town, American soldiers ate their evening meals in front a building destroyed in earlier fighting. As the fifth-year mark of the United States invasion of Iraq approached, President Bush spoke in Washington to observe the fifth anniversary of the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. nytimes.com)

Before I Could Explain

Compared to almost any image and accompanying description I've seen these past five years, this says everything one needs to know about Cheney/Bush's Iraq war.

It was included in FirstPerson, a feature of the MSNBC website where readers can post their own pictures.  The specific section, titled "FirstPerson from the frontlines," is dedicated to images from U.S. soldiers in Iraq.  The picture was posted by "Anonymous," and the description reads as follows:

Picture of me and some Iraqi kids home alone in Ta'meem Ramadi in 2006.
They had a wall rug with a picture of the signing of the United States
Declaration of Independence in their living room.
I asked them if their parents told them what it meant and they did not have a clue.
Their parents purchased the rug in a market.  I also have a second picture of the entire wall rug.

We had to leave before I could explain what the picture meant.

Every time I think about this, I just want to cry.

FirstPerson from the frontlines (MSNBC)

Your Turn: Halo

Bush Defends Iraq War in Speech (NYT)

(image: Gerald Herbert/Associated Press. Washington. March 19, 2008. nyt.com)

Saving Face

For it's coverage of the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War, the NYT is using the platform of its new Baghdad Bureau blog to highlight key images and recollections.

In this instance, The Times paired this highly controversial image with a vignette from the soldier who lent his flag for this act in Firdos Square.  In that reflection, then Lieutenant Tim McLaughlin recounts how the U.S. flag that covered the Saddam statue's face was given to him after the attack on the Pentagon on 9/11.

Writes Mr. McLaughlin, who left the service as a captain in September '06 and is now a second year law student at Boston College:

On April 9, my tank was the first to roll into Paradise Square in Baghdad. The world’s media were there, too, confined to the Ishtar and Palestine hotels, but I didn’t know that at the time. I was scanning for people who were trying to kill me. Turns out the bad guys were a few blocks to the northeast where my friend Chad’s platoon was. My American flag was placed on the statue of Saddam Hussein that day so I could take a picture of it. People watching on their televisions at home saw it too.

They liked it. Or didn’t. Or changed their minds later on. I told a reporter, “I know Iraq didn’t have anything to do with Sept. 11, but I think that given the opportunity, a person like Saddam Hussein would certainly be capable of trying to hit London or Paris or New York.”

What's wrong here?  Let's count.  In pairing the image with this defensive account, there is the suggestion that:

1. The military condoned the act, when in fact it realized, almost instantly, that the placement of the flag was a symbolic disaster.

2.  The military supposedly didn't know the press would be there!!!

3.  Even in retrospect, the act is seen as serving a strictly private purpose.

4.  In spite of the disclaimer, Saddam Hussein is still mentioned as a threat in the same breath as 9/11.

What is mostly wrong here, however, is the editorial act of using McLaughlin to run interference for the image.  What we see, and need to continue to take away from this visual, is the instinct to conquer.  Also not to be obscured is the evidence of the machinery (the outstretched hand of the man from the "rent-a-crowd," notwithstanding) used by the American military to rip down Saddam's statue, while simultaneously attributing this act to the popular will.

Maintaining the Times anniversary slant, you can check out more "fast-and-noose" coverage on this companion post.

From 9/11 to Fall of Baghdad, an Ex-Marine Explains What It Means to Him (baghdadbureau.blogs.nytimes)
U.S. Flag on Iraqi Monument Causes Concern (Common Dreams)

History To Some, Coney Island To Others (BNN)

(image: Jerome Delay/AP.  Baghdad, 2003. via nytimes.com)