This photo ran in The Washington Post on Thursday, Apr. 1, 2004. The source for this image was a screen capture of that edition's front page, which came from The Newseum. The photographer was Ali Jasim for Reuters. Of the several papers from across the U.S. and Europe (and a few in the Middle East) that I took the time to check, it seems that only the Post and the British Guardian ran this photo. Several featured those men's blackened corpses hanging from a bridge, the NYT among them. Most ran the photo of a man next to a burning vehicle, his hands his in the air and a broad smile on his face, with "atrocity," "horror," "dark day," "grisly," or "savagery" splayed across two to four columns. What still stops me, 12 hours later, is this boy's smile. I look at that, and then I look at the chanting crowd in the back, and I wonder how this is. I just stared at this for 5 or 10 minutes, thinking about what had gone on in these people's lives up to that moment, and so many different thoughts came to mind I decided to open up some sort of exchange. How is that people are able to revel like this over such a ghastly scene? Is it just because of a sense of victory -- revenge -- over the seemingly invincible invader? Is it because the remains of this person are something they can touch, have power over, stand above, after years of being subject to the sanctions and violence of other countries? I thought about how much violence these young men (and the one woman, in white, with the clog) might have seen in their lives, and I wondered if that cumulative experience somehow found release, or supposed vindication, in this celebration. (I just thought of the ending sequence of Return of the Jedi, of all things, when the Ewoks beat on Imperial helmets like a balaphone. In essence, isn't that the same message, only packaged with furry cuteness? "The oppressors are dead, and now we will make music with their skulls.") Anyhow, thinking of the conditions of hardship or violence that might have shaped these people's lives, I noticed their youth. It seems plausible that most of them are high school age. Even without knowing precisely how old they are, I realized that most of the people photographed here were toddlers or young children who grew up after Desert Storm and 12 years of sanctions. Even though they're Sunnis, and likely had advantage over other ethnic groups in Iraq during Hussein's reign, the impact and deprivation of the sanctions had to have had a negative effect on the quality of their lives, and possibly contributed to a cultivation of bitterness or dissatisfaction with the Western powers (if not also Hussein). By bringing up all of this, I am not trying to find a way to lessen or excuse what was done, and how people took action afterward. This is degrading and absolutely dehumanizing for all involved: The lives and spirits of the men who were killed, the men who killed them, the youth and adults who let loose with rage and exultation as they shook the rigid, ravaged hand of one corpse, and broke the legs and head off of another with feet, shoes, poles and shovels. I think of what Krishnamurti asserted: "We are the world." We created this suffering. And we have. Obviously, none of us dropped 2,000-lb bombs on these people's families -- most of those among you who I know were likely out in the streets at some point, showing and speaking your disapproval of an invasion. K's point was related to the aversion and animosity and anger within our hearts, within our minds and thoughts, which contribute to imbalanced, exploitative or unsettled situations in our societies and institutions. (And entertainment, the episode of CSI that I saw tonight being an example. How hypocritical is it for networks to hedge on showing what happened in a real conflict, yet blood-soaked, murderous battery and the beating and strangulation of a pregnant woman, followed by her evisceration and extraction of her child with a hunting knife, is prime-time entertainment?) At one point I thought, "This would never happen in America." Which might not be true (and certainly doesn't mean that we have a kinder, better society), but I'm thinking -- at the very least -- of a situation where people could rampage like this without any interevention of passers-by or police. (I did read that some onlookers in Falluja were shocked by the ferocity of this event). And this says nothing of the aversion that most Americans have to anything bloody or grotesque (again, in real life, not in regard to so-called entertainment). The sustained level of violence and deprivation that has beset Iraq for the last decade has never been experienced in this country -- we haven't seen bodies and vehicles and buildings in our hometowns blown and shot apart, seen people in the communitystarved, or sickened by depleted uranium, year after year. These people likely have, and so, I'll assert, something in them has mutated or died, and a reveling in the horrible (familiar) death of The Other is what they -- so unfortunately -- are able to express. On the flipside: If Osama bin Laden himself, or a group of his adherents, were ambushed on your local main drag, can you say for certain that a scene like this would not be repeated? Are there not those in your community who might take cruel liberties with the bodies to exact some sort of revenge for Our Boys, or the dead of 9/11? Would they not be the same SAVAGES decried in the NY Post? Isn't emptying a clip or a dropping a cluster bomb into a neighborhood, or bulldozing and carpetbombing infantry (as happened in '91) a greater savagery? No one is right here. No one claim a higher morality, a greater indignance or outrage. This a human disaster. This picture is not the whole picture, by any means; but it's indicative of a dis-ease, a growing distress, among the people and nations on this planet. We're all involved in this, and following a course of action that seeks simply to destroy the representatives of "the problem" will not work. I look at this photo and I really cannot conceive of the unimaginably terrifying, painful and cruel death that came upon those men, nor can I conceive of the place or emotional level in which the cruelty depicted here (counting coups with shoes) is an outlet for happiness. Debasement is victory. Occupation is liberation. War brings peace. Think of how incongruous and inhumane that is. That's very sad. This is a human problem, and it indicates the real work that needs to be done in order to promote redress and balance, and to reaffirm what our lives and connections with each other -- each nation -- are meant to be... I might as well end there. << more words -- say something -- nmazca.blog >>