Censoring the Reality in Iraq
Photojournalist Zoriah recently witnessed a suicide bombing in Anbar province. “Several dozen people lost their lives … children, old men, civilians, police, and military men. The scene was horrific beyond words, even for someone like me who has a fairly high threshold for such things.” He managed to take a few graphic photographs before he was escorted away by U.S. marines.
After posting the photographs on his blog, he was told to remove them by public affairs officers of the U.S. military. When he refused, his embed with the marine unit was terminated.
As a commenter on reddit put it, “Funny how the folks who most support war never want to see it. Out of sight, out of mind.”
Update: Here’s another illustration of our complacency from Café Philos.
Tags: censorship, violence, war
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BEEHIVE said,
July 8, 2008 @ 3:18 pm
So here is my dilema. If we show more “reality” we will see just how horrible war is, but if we are bombarded with pictures, we might become use to it. So….what do you do?
July 8, 2008 @ 3:25 pm
That is a thorny dilemma. My only somewhat facetious answer is to make it so that those photographs aren’t possible because we’re not killing our idealistic young men and women in wars of aggression. I keep hoping that if we see how ugly wars are that we’ll think deeply before we start them, but I have to acknowledge that we can become blasé about it, perhaps even hunger for it. I keep hoping that we’ll grow beyond that.