The Image at the End of the Tunnel

(original modified for fit)

by John Louis Lucaites and Robert Hariman

The caption reads, “Seeing Iraq as it is (at least through the window of an armored vehicle).”

The image appears in the NYT Magazine and introduces Michael Ignatieff’s mea culpa for having supported the war in Iraq. He’s right, of course. He did get it wrong and for many of the reasons that he identifies. But at the core of his apologia is the claim that he, and by extension others, were wrong because they confused “the world as it is with the world as they wish it to be.”

Good advice, surely, which then is followed by his resolution to be “less swayed by my emotions” in the future And right there Ignatieff is on the road to being wrong again. To see what is at stake, take a look at the photographs accompanying the article. The six images stitched together were shot while looking out of an armored vehicle. The viewer is separated and sealed off from the surrounding environment by bulletproof glass. (The window also has the look of a small television screen, another emotional buffer.)

What we see is a thoroughly fragmented Iraq, a world of disconnected moments in space and time; although we clearly see what is there, it is hard to know what it might mean. We have no sense of context outside the vehicle and no basis for response to what is seen. Each fragment appears as a specimen, something to be handled objectively and perhaps pieced together, but having little value in itself.

Thus, the images remind us that politics is susceptible to what James C. Scott calls Seeing Like a State. Scott reminds us that “Certain forms of knowledge and control require a narrowing of vision,” and political control can depend on seeing the world from a distanced, amoral perspective. This “tunnel vision” separates the viewer emotionally from the scene in order to maximize strategic rationality without regard for complexity or moral consequences. As Scott documents, when such political thinking is backed by state power, the results can be catastrophic.

Ignatieff’s essay is a thoughtful meditation on political judgment, but it inadvertently provides a recipe for making additional mistakes. Many were swept away by moral zeal in supporting the war, but some of those who opposed it made better judgments precisely because they could imagine and emotionally register the havoc that would result. Becoming less emotional may be good advice for some, but it is not the key to practical wisdom and it is not likely to make sense of Iraq.

As one can see from the photographer’s vantage: by emphasizing the tunnel vision of the armored vehicle, the picture demonstrates how a narrow perspective from a secure position, however accurate, still is part of the problem. Any solution will require multiple points of view and less emotional detachment. Ignatieff knows as much: he concludes (rightly, though inconsistently) by calling for leaders “acquainted with grief.”

The same is true for the citizens who elect those leaders, and for that we need other images. Flag-draped coffins, for example. . . .

John Louis Lucaites is Professor of Rhetoric and Public Culture in the department of communication and culture at Indiana University. John, along with Robert Hariman, are co-authors of the newly released No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy, and the blog No Caption Needed.

(image: Benjamin Lowy/New York Times Magazine. nytimes.com)

Comments

[John Powers]

Thank you for this post. The rightists in the USA have consistently complained about "Bush haters." As much as I'll confess acting on the impulses my reptile brain, I'm not so sure that hatred has ever really motivated me very much. My gut was not to trust President Bush and Vice President Cheney. It wasn't hatred.

Michael Ignatieff is chagrined he listened to those who'd suffered so under Saddam Hussein. In my lowly evolved way of thinking, he's mad at them for swaying his reason. But I'm confused because surely he trusted George Bush and doesn't seem to express any anger at Bush for his misplaced trust. Ignatieff concludes:

"Daring leaders can be trusted as long as they give some inkling of knowing what it is to fail. They must be men of sorrow acquainted with grief, as the prophet Isaiah says, men and women who have not led charmed lives, who understand us as we really are, who have never given up hope and who know they are in politics to make their country better. These are the leaders whose judgment, even if sometimes wrong, will still prove worthy of trust."

Here he alludes to his being caught up in believing that George Bush was a daring leader he trusted. But nowhere in Ignatieff's essay do I sense that he's bitter that he trusted a President he shouldn't have. No it's all the Iraqi exiles fault.

My reptile brain fires: WTF!

[jtfromBC]

MICHAEL IGNATIEFF returned after 20 years to become the *appointed* leader of the Liberal Party and then *anointed* as Prime Minister following the impending national election. Opposing leadership candidates surprisingly and shockingly ganged up to deny him the leadership at the convention.

Occasionally we enjoy as a leader an academician or a philosopher-king but Ignatieff with all his charm and class bore resemblance to, but lacked the content of Pierre Trudeau.

This mea culpa about Iraq is as valid as the mea culpa of the NYT's. They must be delighted in publishing such an ally.

Ignatieff still harbours aspirations of leadership but many *ordinary Canadians* will evaluate his mea culpa for what it really is - ***bullshit***.

I'm hoping he doesn't get a second chance and Harvard will be delighted to have him return I'm sure.

And by the way its much easier to deal with religious wing-nuts like Stephen Harper than Machiavellian characters like Micheal Ignatieff.

[jtfromBC]

John Louis Lucaites and Robert Hariman:

With respect to the arguments of James C Scott -'Seeing Like a State' -

I suggest the arguments of Noam Chomsky - 'The Responsibility of Intellectuals'.

"Intellectuals are in a position *to expose the lies of governments*, to analyze actions according to their causes and motives and often hidden intentions. In the Western world, at least, they have the power that comes from political liberty, from access to information and freedom of expression."
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/12172

Reviewing Chomsky's forty year old study it's not difficult to understand how and why intellectuals like Michael Ignateff go off the rails.

[Gahso]

For a while, I didn't know what to say about these images. Then it came to me - these embody the very *opposite* of dialogue. Communication isn't possible through bullet proof portals. This is also how may of our fine young ambassadors (read:soldiers) see Iraq.

[ummabdulla]

The photos do seem distant and lifeless - except the last one, which is puzzling. Who is that guy? He's not an insurgent standing next to an armored vehicle holding his AK-47 while he yells at the soldiers, is he?

As for the "mea culpa", I started to read it but lost interest. Usually they claim that they just didn't know this was going to happen, and usually they claim that nobody could have known... Except that plenty of people did know and said so. This guy seems a little more creative with his excuse, but I'd still characterize it the same way jt did.

[Asta]

This is the way we view everything in Amerika -- through a windshield, through a protective glass.

It's been this way for decades. Why the surprise now?

We've lived behind a protective shield since we began testing nuclear weapons in Nevada (some shields not so good, ask the ghosts of the actors in the movie "The Conquerer").

And maybe earlier.

Any of you willing to step out from behind that shield?

[Harley]

Interesting work and thoughtful comments. I, too, thought at first that it was a trick of shooting through a broken TV set, a trick I've seen before. At once it serves to trivialize the subject as well as insert a barrier between observer and subject, as John notes. As a photographic encapsulation of the situation in Iraq, it's totally worthless. The viewer doesn't know what he is seeing. The feeling of having to 'see' it from behind bullet-proof glass in an armored vehicle says more about the conditions in Iraq than the actual photos do.

As to Ignatieff 's article, I didn't read it all but he seems to be purveying his mea culpa while dragging a lot of others with him. "Experience can imprison decision-makers in worn-out solutions while blinding them to the untried remedy that does the trick." So, are we fighting the Vietnam war again, only with one hand tied behind us?

"Few of us hear the horses coming." That may be true for the few that Ignatieff knows, but abroad in the country there were many who knew before the invasion that it would not end well. People like Ignatieff were busily calling them traitors.

"One thing is clear: The costs of staying will be borne by Americans, while the cost of leaving will be mostly borne by Iraqis." How can anyone who has seen Iraq today, or even heard reports, real reports, say that the cost of staying will be borne by Americans? What rot! The cost is borne by some 3600 plus American military personnel and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. To say that if we leave the cost will be borne by Iraqis is to admit that he is still not listening or seeing. Like those he hangs out with, he STILL doesn't get it.

To sum up the part of the article that I did read, Ignatieff says he might have been wrong, but so was everybody else. That's not exactly a mea culpa, it's blaming others for being as duped as you were. Maybe that's balm for the readers of the NYT, but it serves only to further anger a populace already angered to the brim.

[jtfromBC]

A TV shop in NY city with demos tuned to ABC - NBC - MSNBC - FOX - CNN and PBS, they are all describing the great cleanup work the coalition forces are doing.
Note its still a bit untidy in front of one building and there's a sign post needing attention at another location. Other than these small details there's a sense of order and tranquility.
Is that colorful fellow guarding vacant property for one of the 1.6 million individuals who have left the country or for a few of the 1.8 millions displaced within it ?

Gasho, it reminds me of looking though the *opposite* end of binoculars as a small child, wondering why everything was so far away.

[PTate in FR]

I think it is very generous of you to describe this mea culpa as a thoughtful mediation on political judgment. I thought it was vague, meandering, full of hot air. I wonder if he got paid per word. If this mushy logic represents how he thinks, no wonder he got Iraq wrong!

I look at the pictures and the first thing that strikes me, as you point, is that our view is disconnected. We don't see a complete scene. The first five images are of bombable targets--everything is clean and stark. Barren even; What a god-forsaken country! There are no people there. The last picture shows guy with gun shaking his fist at us. The landscape has changed. For the first time we see life-trees, grasses.

By the way, I think "I felt too much emotion" is about the lamest excuse ever for launching an invasion of another country. Emotion, feeling, is a good thing, used wisely. It wasn't emotion that caused the bad judgments about Iraq. It was arrogance. We attacked Iraq because our government was drunk with its own power and wanted to lash out at someone, post 9/11. Just as the series of pictures indicate, war supporters didn't visualize the people in Iraq. They didn't see a complete picture. Iraq was a set of bombable targets. One consequence of their aggression is seen picture 6.

[John Lucaites]

PTate: "By the way, I think "I felt too much emotion" is about the lamest excuse ever for launching an invasion of another country. Emotion, feeling, is a good thing, used wisely. It wasn't emotion that caused the bad judgments about Iraq. It was arrogance."

You got that absolutely right! But that is what makes "realist" approaches to foreign policy so dangerous -- the assumption that we can separate "reason" from "emotion" and be driven by a strict, strategically calculated rationality. That's what Scott means by "seeing like a State" and why the photo is so damning ... when we see like a state we see very little ... facts, perhaps, but there is no basis for meaning. But there is nothing new here. Remember what Henry Kissinger said about the protestors to the US invasion of Cambodia, "They were, in my vidw, as wrong as they were passionate ... Emoton was not a policy." More's the pity.

[paulimorph]

running-guts following-dogs

[Doctor Jay]

I agree, the essay was too long, and rambling. He's doing battle with all his self-justifications.

Cognitive dissonance theory predicts that people who do things that are inconsistent with their self image employ a variety of cognitive strategies to avoid feeling the discomfort of that inconsistency.

These photos seem to me to highlight that strategy. Looking at everything from the armored car makes it all look different. We are more distant, more detached. We get to edit out a lot of the world. And we're protected.

A year ago, the view out the window would have been of "peacful Iraq" or "reconstructing Iraq" or "democratic Iraq".

We're looking at other stuff now, but we've still got the armor around us.

[Susan Murray]

It reminds me of the way people see some inner city neighborhoods.

"This is the way we view everything in Amerika -- through a windshield, through a protective glass."

So true.

[Susan Murray]

"A TV shop in NY city with demos tuned to ABC - NBC - MSNBC - FOX - CNN and PBS, they are all describing the great cleanup work the coalition forces are doing."

Agree. They are rather like TV screens.

[LanceThruster]

A co-worker buried her only child this past weekend who was killed by an IED in Irag. I feel helpless though I've tried to do everything I know to do to stop the war and get them all home safely (as well as push that they have the right gear). At some point if the US Military is to uphold their oath, they'll need to insist that ShrubCo quite wiping with the Constitution. I am sickened by all our leadership (especially the Dems from whom I naively expected better).

[readytoblowagasket]

Thoughts about the Michael Ignatieff piece:

Poor Michael Ignatieff. It must be hard for someone with such an elite and noble ancestry to be so bloody wrong about Iraq, when 36 million common pinkos worldwide were so right. How can one explain such a gargantuan (and public!) error of superior intellect? It must feel like some sort of crazy alternate-universe Revolution, one where he deposes himself. That must totally suck.

I guess that’s why Mr. Lesser Evil can’t stop rewriting this awkward chapter of his autobiography. This is not the first time the “former denizen of Harvard” wrote a prissily pedagogic prose poem to himself, insisting that he’s not a moron. He wrote one for the Times in 2004, and possibly others since. That he keeps rewriting this chapter to prove he’s not an intellectual failure is, sadly, proof that he is one. Poor Michael Ignatieff. Here, he says it himself: Bus drivers can display a shrewder grasp of what’s what than Nobel Prize winners. Ouch. Sniffle.

Let’s not give Ignatieff credit for thoughtfulness just because his resume lists “Family escaped execution by Bolsheviks.” Sometimes narcissism takes subtle disguises.

Thoughts about the photos to come.

[Robert Hariman]

Some belated thoughts after finally reading the thread. In the last week, Ignatieff has been beaten with a stick all over the blogosphere. He deserved every bit of it. The essay is as self-serving as they come. So why did John and I say it was "thoughtful"? Three reasons: 1. We wanted to get past most of it to focus on the photos and how they illustrated his bad advice about being emotionally muted. Obviously, that didn't happen, and for reasons--i.e., emotions--we have to respect. 2. If you read the essay as having nothing to do about Iraq but rather as an essay on the mentality best suited for politics, it's pretty good of kind. John and I have an interest in that literature on prudence, so it was easy for us to bracket his motives. Too easy, it seems; we got suckered on that one. 3. We haven't been interested in talking about any of the many mea culpas now being written becasue they all have been pathetic, don't show real remorse, etc. Because so many of us were right about the war from the beginning, why listen to the other side's still bizarrely convoluted acounts of the world? The lesson I've learned this week at the BAG and elsewhere is that people like Ignatieff do need to be thumped when they don't come clean. The record does need to be set straight, and not being honest and not recognizing good judgment still are major causes of this war. And that's why it remains important to think about what we see and how we feel. One problem with the reaction against Ignatieff--Katha Pollitt's otherwise fine essay at the Nation is a good example--is that we only end up going from worse back to bad. We shouldn't have a foreign policy conducted by overzealous ideologues, sure, but do we really want a foreign policy conducted by "realists" who also have a bad track record? If we reject Rumsfeld only to resurrect Kissinger, we haven't learned a damn thing.

[Davol]

In response to people like Ignatieff saying that we "liberals" protested the war because we "hate America" or are blinded by a bleeding heart, I would like to set the record straight. As a liberal who protested this war crime I only needed to be guided by my Jr. High Social Studies class where I learned that when you attack a defenseless country who is no threat to you then you are committing a WAR CRIME. If my memory serves me right I believe this was established during the Nuremberg trials. I've collected a million reasons since why war on Iraq was wrong, When the Pope was warning Bush about the sin he was about to commit, and I was marching with millions across the world in protest, I only needed my pre-9/11 Jr. High School teaching to put me in the camp of "people who had it right". I think Ignatieff, and his kind who admit to their incorrect perverted intellectualism about why playing Hitler invading Poland with Iraq was the right thing to do should now just get off my TV, and shut the hell up.

[Davol]

In response to people like Ignatieff saying that we "liberals" protested the war because we "hate America" or are blinded by a bleeding heart, I would like to set the record straight. As a liberal who protested this war crime I only needed to be guided by my Jr. High Social Studies class where I learned that when you attack a defenseless country who is no threat to you then you are committing a WAR CRIME. If my memory serves me right I believe this was established during the Nuremberg trials. I've collected a million reasons since why war on Iraq was wrong, When the Pope was warning Bush about the sin he was about to commit, and I was marching with millions across the world in protest, I only needed my pre-9/11 Jr. High School teaching to put me in the camp of "people who had it right". I think Ignatieff, and his kind who admit to their incorrect perverted intellectualism about why playing Hitler invading Poland with Iraq was the right thing to do should now just get off my TV, and shut the hell up.