This photograph reminded me of Private Jackson, the sharpshooter in the movie Saving Private Ryan who takes strength and solace by prefacing each kill, executed with surgical precision, by reciting scripture from the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament.  In one scene near the end of the movie he cites from Psalms, 25:2, “Let me be not ashamed, let my enemies try not to fool me.”  It is not enough to save him, but the point is made as he dies a martyr to the cause of the “good war.”  Or at least that is how World War II and those fighting for the allies are  remembered.

The marine in the photograph above is fighting the war in Afghanistan—“Operation Enduring Freedom,” the longest war in U.S. history—and it is hard to know exactly how it will be remembered in the next century.  But there is an important distinction between it and WW II that the photograph here elides and underscores at the same time.  The allied troops fighting in the European theater of WW II may have taken comfort in identifying with a Christian god, but their “enemies” no doubt prayed to the same god, however misdirected they were. This soldier, however, is part of a predominantly American—and yes, implicitly Christian—military force occupying a thoroughly and explicitly Muslim nation.  And however else we might justify U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, there is no getting around the fact that it was initially characterized as a crusade and continues to bear the earmarks of a holy war; and  surely that is how the indigenous, Muslim population might reasonably be inclined to interpret it when official military weapons and other accouterments such as helmets continue to bear the visible signs of a crusade.

To the extent that the War in Afghanistan is a war on terror its success or failure will turn in no small measure on winning “hearts and minds” throughout the Muslim world.  It is hard to imagine how displays such as this can serve a productive end.  But more, it should give us all just a little bit of pause to wonder what it is that truly animates our persistence in a war that seems to know no end.

Photo Credit: Adek Berry/AFP/Getty Images.

Cross-posted at BAGnewsNotes.

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It could almost be a scene from a 1950s John Ford western.  The big sky, simultaneously inviting and foreboding, dominates a sprawling and deserted frontier plain. A small detachment of soldiers emerge out of the dark shadows, returning from the day’s patrol scouting renegade Indians.  A distant fort is cast in the sun’s bright light, a small preserve of civilization and safety caught between the dark shadows in the foreground and the foreboding clouds approaching in the background.  Only John Wayne and the horses are missing.

Of course, this is not a scene from a 1950s movie, but it does call attention to one narrative subtly (or not) implied  by past and present administrations for framing the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.  Then we were taming the U.S. frontier to enable westward expansion, now we tame the Middle East in order to facilitate the demands of globalization; Apaches or Taliban, one “terrorist” is no different than the other, or at least so it would appear.

I don’t want to seem unduly cynical here.  There were arguably good reasons for us to invade Afghanistan when we did in 2001 in search of Osama bin Laden whose involvement in the 9/11 attacks warranted a militant response designed to bring him to justice.  But that was ten years ago.  Bin Laden still remains at-large and it is highly unlikely that he is in Afghanistan, a point muted by the fact that the U.S. mission seems to have taken on the attitude of a “manifest destiny.”

President Obama has promised that we will begin to draw down our presence in Afghanistan in the summer of 2011, but Sect. of Defense Gates notes that it will be “minimal” and that we will continue to have a “security” presence past 2014.  Fort Taliban, it seems, will replace Fort Apache.  “Manifest destiny” was not an unproblematic rationale for westward expansion in the 19^th century and it seems all the more problematic here, not least because it seems to operate as a deeply seeded and unstated assumption making it difficult to challenge.

An alternate frame for thinking about the U.S. presence in Afghanistan might be suggested by this photograph from the Helmand Province.

A single, unrecognizable soldier trudges along a sun baked, mud soaked road leaving boot prints in the sand. Past and future, left and right, are virtually indistinguishable from one another, and in any case neither seems to beckon the attention of the soldier, whose forward progress out of the top of the frame is single-mindedly directional.  Where he is headed and where he has come from is unclear.  What is clear is that sooner or later his boot prints will have been erased, perhaps to be replaced by another set, but maybe not.  One other thing is clear as well.  Once the soldier is gone, the sun baked, mud soaked road will remain.

Yes, only John Wayne and the horses are missing.  And the happy ending.

Photo Credits:  Finbarr O’Reilly/Reuters; Adek Berry/AFP/Getty

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Just outside the bright lights illuminating the democratic movements in the news this month lie the shadows of history.  Triumphant demonstrators smiled radiantly in Egypt, while the army quietly consolidated control.  As the tottering Muammar el-Qaddafi took self-caricature to new heights (breaking his previous record), other despots doled out cash and intimidation to make sure they weren’t next in line.  Western governments boldly announced their commitment to peaceful transitions, while sending envoys to curry business–much of it with autocrats–at an international arms show.   American pundits celebrated liberation and condescended to advise the fledgling democracies, while acting as if the US government and American corporations had never been the mainstays of the regimes being deposed for corruption and brutality.

So it is that I find this photograph a fitting image for the current historical moment.

The sun is seen through a windscreen in Dresden, Germany.  The screen would be invisible but for the ice crystals that are occluding the thick yellow disk hanging in the night sky.  One strand and part of another could be molten gold, while the dark splotches could be oil, dirt, bacteria–anything capable of smothering human life by slow accumulation.  The deep contrasts of light and darkness allude to German expressionist cinema–an expression of a time in history when the forces of darkness were massing beneath modernity’s cosmopolitan veneer.  The small crescent of light limning the smaller sphere in the upper left quadrant carries a different code, however, suggesting that nature’s regularities will continue, and that may be enough to provide some basis for hope.

Other regularities persist as well.  War, for example.

This photograph is one example of an image that appears periodically now: a convoy of oil tankers on its way to supply US troops in Afghanistan has been ambushed.  Here, as is often the case, the attack occurred in Pakistan, for reasons that are not mysterious.  What strikes me is now much this photograph resembles the one above.  Military action shot and artsy nature image are drawing on the same cultural repertoire, and in fact speaking to each other.  Light and darkness, the sun and ice or a fireball and unharmed spectators, the effect is much the same.  A source of power has become strangely complicated, and energy seems to be draining out of the future.   (The explosion mimes a mushroom cloud, which imitates the power of the sun, which sent the rays that made the plants that became the oil, so the circle of life and death may be tighter than we realize.)  If those in the picture aren’t exactly in a panic, their comfortable distance from the burn isn’t a sign of hope, either.  When war assumes the regularity of nature, you might as well get used to it.

Like the windscreen, the first photograph provides a trick of light: We see the sun, but it somehow can seem to mirror the earth: a bright place, covered with clouds and continents, vital and yet distant, a heavenly body yet strangely vulnerable and capable somehow of becoming lost.  There is another trick as well: the sun that seems to be slipping into darkness, is in fact rising.  The sun precedes the day, which has not yet come.  Light and shadow are forever bound together, but it can make all the difference which way one is moving.  Let’s hope that the light of history is on the rise for those wanting democracy rather than dictatorship and peace rather than war.  One must admit, however, that bright moments of change fly upward like sparks from a fire, while the darkness remains.  Hope, yes, but it will take more than hope.

Photographs by Arno Burgi/EPA and A. Majeed/AFP-Getty Images.

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The battle between pro- and anti-democratic forces in Cairo has directed attention away from the fact that the U.S. continues to have nearly 100,000 troops in Afghanistan fighting the longest war in our nation’s history.  The cost of the war to the U.S. is approximately $119 billion dollars annually, a small enough number in comparison to our $3 trillion dollar budget perhaps, but somewhat ironic in comparison to the GDP of Afghanistan which is approximately $14 billion dollars.  And let’s not forget the 499 Americans killed in action in 2010, as well as the thousands of civilian casualties that seem to increase with each year of our military presence.

President Obama has promised that we will begin to bring troops home in July 2011, which implies a winding down of the occupation.  But there is plenty of evidence to indicate that we will remain in the shadows for a long time to come.  So, for example, neo-cons like Senator Lyndsey Graham have been calling for U.S. military bases in Afghanistan “into perpetuity,” while recent reports from the Pentagon suggest that troop reductions this summer will come from staff positions and support personnel but, “there won’t be any combat forces cut.”  One might say that all of this leaves the American public “in the dark.”

The above photograph is of a patrol of U.S. Marines in the Musa Qala district of Helmand province but it might as well be an allegory for American presence in Afghanistan.  There is no telling if the sun is rising or setting, whether the day is beginning or ending, and so too it would seem with the U.S. occupation. Deep shadows shroud the entire scene in an eerie darkness, offset only by a distant light that seems well beyond the grasp of the forward most soldier.  Indeed, the prominent linear perspective of the line of soldiers receding to the horizon gestures towards an infinity (or is it perpetuity?) that extends—as if an optical illusion—every time we appear to get close to it.  And more, notice too how those shadows literally absorb the soldier’s silhouetted bodies, suggesting that they are inexorably fused with (or is it mired in?) the landscape. The rewould seem to be no exit from this situation

The silhouetted bodies seem to operate in a second register as well, for it is impossible to identify the soldiers in the scene as anything but soldiers.  The soldier in the close foreground is indistinct from those fading into the infinite distance, as well no doubt as those who follow behind him.  Each is like the next, and the only thing that really stands out are the weapons they are carrying.  The irony here is pronounced by the caption that quotes the platoon leader who says “We’ve definitely had a lot of progress because we do so many patrols, we get out, we put our faces out there.”  It may be that success requires winning over “hearts and minds,” but for a country that has known almost constant war and occupation for decades, if not centuries, there is little doubt that those faces are anything more than markers of an alienating otherness, metaphorically shrouded in darkness if not literally so.

There is a third register in which the image works as well.  If you look closely you will notice that the soldier in the immediate foreground appears to be turning backwards and looking in the direction of the camera.  His face is obscured by the darkness, of course, but it is not impossible to imagine that he is making eye contact with the viewer who is equally positioned in the darkness that seems to extend beyond the bottom front of the image.  That eye contact would imply a demand of recognition.  It is hard to say what that particular recognition might be, but it is no less hard to imagine that it would imply a measure of complicity from which it will be very  hard to extricate ourselves.

In short, the photograph seems to be a reminder that the current war in Afghanistan casts deep shadows that obscure what we are doing there and make it very hard to imagine that we will ever get out without a marked and unmistakable effort of will.  Whether the current administration is caught in the shadows or is helping to cast them is not yet clear.

Photo Credit: Dmitry Kostyukov/AFP/Getty Images

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I’ve spent the last several days looks at hundreds, maybe thousands, of photographs of the political unrest in Egypt.  At first blush there didn’t seem to be anything that distinguished the photographic record from the images representing political strife in other Middle Eastern countries in recent times – Lebanon, Iran, Pakistan, Greece, Tunisia, etc.: burned out buildings and cars aflame, streets littered with rubble and trash, images desecrated or burned in effigy, hands and fists raised in rage and protest, the spray of water cannon and the haze of tear gas, jack booted police wielding automatic weapons and bullet proof masks and shields standing off against sandal and sneaker clad protestors armed with sticks and stones, injured or dead bodies, makeshift funerals, and tanks … lots and lots of tanks.  On careful examination it was the photographs of tanks, such as the one above, that really set this collage of chaos and violence apart.

The tank, of course, is a visual trope for oppressive regimes, whether employed by autocratic rulers or occupying forces.  Think of the Nazi Blitzkrieg or the Prague Spring or Tiananmen Square or the ground assault in Operation Desert Storm, or more recently the deployment of  Israeli tanks in Gaza.  Wherever we find it, the tank is visualized as a faceless, inhuman, mechanized marker of military might. While not truly invincible, its sheer size and robotic appearance nevertheless casts it as simultaneously magnificent and terrifying, an intimidating—perhaps even sublime—symbol of power and force. An instrument of technological rationality, it leaves no space for reason.  Indeed, its very presence implies a “take no prisoners” sensibility, and where tanks appear there is normally no occasion for dialogue.

But in Egypt in recent days something strange has happened, as the military tank has taken on something of a human(e) face.  In the photograph above the driver of the tank is actually engaged in a discourse of some sort with the protestors.  According to the caption the protestors are imploring the tank driver to join their opposition to the Mubarak government.  There is no way to know if that is what is actually taking place here, but in a sense it really doesn’t matter, for the very fact that talk has mitigated (if not actually replaced) physical violence suggests the possibility of a less than tragic outcome.

Of course, one tank driver talking to a group of protestors can hardly be taken as the liberalizing of an autocratic regime. But the fact is that there are numerous such photographs circulating throughout the various news outlets  that indicate the presence of the Egyptian military as something of a stabilizing force, managing the tension between the protestors and the police (apparently the active and oppressive security arm of the Mubarak regime) especially in and around Cairo’s Tahir (Liberation) Square.  So, for example, there are numerous images of protestors taking time out to pray en mass as members of the military standing on tanks look on—and in one sense, at least, appear to be “looking over” the protesters.

Perhaps the most poignant of such tank photographs is the one below:

It is hard to know exactly what is going on here.  It would seem that the protestor is handing the baby to the soldier on the tank.  But why?  There is no way of telling for sure, but perhaps that is the point.  The offer of the child is not driven by an obvious or inexorable instrumental rationality, but rather is something of a more open, reasoned  symbol of unity or solidarity between the people/protestors and those charged with securing their “freedom”—whatever that term might mean in the Egyptian context. And in the process, the negative symbolic resonance of the tank is neutralized or domesticated —notice the smiles on everyone’s faces— as both those above and those below are connected by touching their common future. In this context, the tank, and by extension the military itself, becomes a productive buffer between the people and the government as events work themselves out.  To get a sense of why this might be important, consider the alternatives if the military were to side with either the Mubarak government against the protestors or visa versa.

Of course we should never forget that tanks are weapons of war.  And more, that they are commonly used as instruments of oppression and control, both rhetorically and otherwise.  But at least in this one instance they seem to have been deployed—or at least recast—as symbols of a more reasonable public culture in which the tension between opposing forces is held in stasis.

Credit:  Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images; Asmaa Waguih/Reuters.

Cross-posted at the Shpilman Institute for Photography blog.

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What if you were to ask yourself what happened while you were asleep?  A simple question, unless one doesn’t take it as a literal question–that is, regarding what happened during the night or while one was napping.  It’s a different question if it pertains to dogmatic slumbers, chronic indifference, or collective amnesia.  That kind of sleep can go on for a long, long time.  And, of course, it can occur while you otherwise are fully awake.  Awake, for example, but shrouded in myth.

This is a remarkable photograph, not least because it imparts such a sense of calm.  Three laborers in Afghanistan have become transposed into profound elements of Chinese culture: the misted mountains that are the backdrop for so many paintings of natural beauty, and the three sages of Confucian philosophy who exemplified the virtuous conduct required for social harmony.

Against the pacific backdrop of the ancient mountain softened by fog, the three figures strike unaffected poses of disciplined conversation.  One expounds, another offers a counterpoint, while the third listens reflectively.  Each is self-composed, seemingly capable of serenely walking the earth without care or imposition, and yet they are joined by the intent concentration evident in their gestures.  Whatever the whirl of events in the modern world, they seem to be safely ensconced in a time out of time where philosophical conversation and unhurried labor are all one needs to be content.

As it happens, the simple labor involved spreading dirt on an earthen barrier for a police station.  We don’t know what they were discussing, but they definitely are caught up in the war.  The photograph, which rightly reminds us that there is more to contemplate in Afghanistan than the war, also becomes a template for the mythic interpretation that I set out above.  Stated otherwise, the photographer may have captured how some would like to think of Afghanistan: as a timeless place, graveyard of empires, that will endure unchanged regardless of the current occupation, and that can be conveniently put out of mind, forgotten, left to itself.

Well, that’s one country.  And here’s another:

Not so calm.  This enormous fireball is erupting from an oil tanker that was lit up by an IED.  That kind of fire only comes from modern fuel, and so there is little question that this is a contemporary scene and that the war is front and center.  Instead of the laborers (now known as firefighters) dominating the picture, they are smallish figures set off to the side, obviously dwarfed by the enormous force of the flames.  The sense of time is hardly mythic, as it is clear that the fire will have a relatively predictable burnout, and that the hoses then will be rolled up, the crowd will disperse, and everyone will move on to whatever is going to happen next.

The firefighters appear skilled, properly equipped, and very much an extension of a modern system of command and control.  Look closely, however, and you will see something more: note how closely they stand to the flames, and how unhurried they appear–even calm.  They are exhibiting another kind of serenity: the confidence that comes from having done this job many times before.  And so they have: tankers are being detonated constantly in Afghanistan, and the firefighters and other first responders there are becoming all too experienced in managing disaster.

And so there is something timeless about the second photograph after all.  It’s a modern scene, but also a story of continuous repetition: of bombings that are occurring over and over and over again.  And don’t tell me that the incidence of explosions has decreased in this or that province, or that new headway is being made in the effort to win the hearts and minds of the people.  The fires are burning, and they will continue to burn.

What happened while you were sleeping?  Nothing much, just the war.

Photographs by Chris Hondros/Getty Image and Rahmat Gul/Associated Press.

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Usually I avoid rubbing your face in it, but not today.  This image, which has been sitting on my desktop for a few months, is offered out of anger, grief, and extreme frustration with the press, the public, and the Obama administration–and most of all with the public.

The photograph records a badly maimed soldier being delivered to a military hospital in Kandahar.  Think of how many times you have read about IEDs and about wounds suffered from IED explosions.  Did you ever imagine anything like this?  Think of all the photographs you’ve seen of soldiers standing guard, walking on patrol, talking with villagers, or deploying for another mission.  Did you ever consider how those photos were being used instead of images like this one?

And while we’re asking questions, did you notice, when looking at the photograph above, how absolutely routine this event is to the medical personnel?  Only the soldier jogging out the door looks a bit concerned, and he may be steeling himself against what he knows he is going to see up close.  Everyone else, including the stretcher bearer, has the postures–that is, the attitudes–of complete habituation.  The guy on the right could be waiting to take a number at the social security office.  Something horrific, catastrophic, and uniquely terrible has happened to the soldier on the stretcher, but to everybody else it’s something they’ve seen a thousand times.

If the war in Afghanistan were vital to national security, perhaps this sacrifice would be worth it.  If you have to fight, you want your military to have the experience and other capabilities necessary to handle catastrophic injuries efficiently.  But we know that national security is not on the line in Afghanistan.

We do know that, don’t we?  Two stories intersect today to underscore my frustration: First, press analysis of the WikiLeaks archive of 391,832 documents is exposing greater than admitted death tolls, abuses by US contractors, and brutality by other US allies, as well as US knowledge or and lying about this information.  Second, New York Times photographer Joao Silva was badly injured by a land mine in Afghanistan.  Leg wounds, and others as well.

One reason I am so angry and frustrated is that there really should be no need for the Wikileak documents, or for brave photojournalists to continue to take risks to inform the public.  I want to take nothing away from those who released the documents, or from Silva, whose work I have posted here with deep admiration and respect.  The truth of the matter, however, is that the public has had plenty of information for many years about the sacrifice of our troops and our treasure in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.  Likewise, the government has known even more of the costs, and has not yet–in all this time, and across two administrations–been able to provide a single, legitimate, valid rationale for continuing the war.  (For the record, I think the original invasion of Afghanistan was justified, but that now has no bearing on the current operations.  And I appreciate that public opinion polls state that a majority of Americans oppose the war, but that level of opposition obviously is not enough.)

I think the basic problem is that people, at least collectively, decide to know.  It is not the case that we know and then act.  We decide when we will know, and then we are more likely to act.  You can have the truth staring you in the face, but it doesn’t matter until you decide to suspend all the habits of amnesia, distraction, rationalization, and denial that are otherwise in place and reproduced continuously.  Once we decide, we can look back and see that there was plenty of information there all along.  But we have to make that decision.

The question remains, what will it take to get enough people to decide to know that our war in Afghanistan is futile?  Sometimes, a photograph will make the difference.  But how many photographers and soldiers have to be used up until that day arrives?

Photograph by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images.

Cross-posted at BAGnewsNotes.

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Today the New York Times reported on a “critical assault” against the Taliban in Afghanistan.  There were no photographs in the print edition, and the web version featured only the US commander.  I think we can do better.

This photograph was taken recently in Kandahar, although not during the current operation.  It stands out because of the strange, almost sacral quality of the man on the pallet.  A victim of an IED explosion, he may be raising his head to check on his wounds, or on how he is being maneuvered into the helicopter.  Any bump would be likely to hurt, but perhaps he is merely an interested observer of the emergency routine unfolding around him.  His hand could even be a gesture of thanks; it’s almost as if we were dispensing a blessing.

Strapped in but not resisting and almost meditative, a simple, partially clothed man with unruly hair surrounded by trained professionals and modern military material, his face darkened by dirt or soot yet illuminated as if in a state of grace, it’s as if he were being transported from some other time and place.  As if he were an accidental mummy from human prehistory found in some desert cave, and not one of our allies in the battle against terrorism.

In this second photograph, also taken recently in Kandahar, some of the elements of the first photo have been reversed: now the US soldiers are in the center of the picture and we see their faces, which are the only exposed flesh, as they are before being hit instead of needing medical care, while they are calling for air support instead of already having it, as they are going into battle instead of leaving it.  As before, however, the faces are at once arresting and yet don’t quite fit the story.  The lieutenant on the radio is focused but not on anything immediately around him, while the soldier in the background, who is looking directly for the enemy, appears both unsure and worried.  Neither is looking straight ahead, and because they are so close to the viewer their vulnerability is palpable, as if we could reach forward and swat them.

My point is not that the current attack is going poorly or that war is hell or any other counter-narrative.  Instead, note how each photograph doesn’t quite fit into any narrative, positive or negative.   Neither tells a story of strategic deployment; in fact, each is obviously a fragmentary episode that only suggests a larger narrative.  The man must have been attacked and now is being evacuated, but his image is both enigmatic and disturbing, as if at the scene of an exhumation rather than a rescue.  The soldiers must be taking fire while in the field, but it’s not clear whether this is a routine engagement (look at the lieutenant) in Afghanistan or something closer to an ambush in Vietnam (look at the other soldier hemmed in by the thick foliage).

Let me suggest that the value of these images is precisely that they break up the standard narrative of war reportage–a narrative that continually rationalizes war.  Here I am drawing on The Face of Battle, by the eminent military historian John Keegan.  Contrary to the typical focus by both generals and historians on a reconstructed account of strategic deployment, Keegan set out to learn how warfare turned on the actual details of the ordinary soldier’s experience of battle.  How did a horse charge, or an arrow kill?  Keegan believed that the answers to such questions could provide an important corrective on the perspective of those who ordered soldiers into battle–a perspective, incidentally, that depends on seeing things from a distance.

It is worth noting that the Times story neatly reproduces the rhetorical design that Keegan identifies in the standard narrative: a critical moment will lead to victory because of a commander’s decision, a simplified characterization that fits together with the uniform behavior of the troops, who move as one according to simplified motivations.  You can see for yourself, but suffice it to say that, in the Times’ account, the assault is the “most critical part” of a larger strategy, hundreds of troops move “steadily” and exactly as commanded by General Carter, who expects to know the outcome in 24-48 hours, and nothing is said to indicate any other motivation for “deliberate” military action by the allies and counter-attacks by “insurgents.”  The fact that Afghan soldiers have serious effectiveness issues, that the insurgency is growing because of US military action and economic distress, that the success of this operation will be nullified by economic, social, and political realities on the ground–these and similar qualifications will have to be taken up in another article.

The photographs don’t just tell small stories that might be embedded within larger strategic narratives like so many subplots in a TV series.  We need to see the face of battle not to fill in the picture, but to be reminded that the story itself may be seriously wrong.  And I don’t mean merely the story in the newspaper.

Photographs by David Guttenfelder/Associated Press and Tyler Hicks/The New York Times.

Cross-posted at BAGnewsNotes.

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