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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