Visions of war

I wonder how many people have gotten emotionally involved with the war in Iraq. That is, how many have gone beyond partisan arguments, beyond armchair punditry, and stopped to consider what is happening to the real people over there? Because if you're interested in a reality check, the quickest way to get it is to see a sampling of the photojournalism coming out of the country.

These--as they like to say in the tabloids--are the shocking images they don't want you to see. But the problem with suppressing these images is that without them, as photographer Lucian Perkins said during his presentation at the conference today, war comes across as some faraway football game where the score is U.S. 50, Iraq 0. American audiences end up missing the true story.

Anytime I see this kind of presentation--the first time was during a brown-bag at work, the latest, here, in Florida--I find myself fighting against a lump in my throat; I look around to see if there are any other dry eyes in the house. Frame by frame, all the political posturing and grandstanding that takes up so much prime time airtime fades away as you're brought behind the photographer's lens. It doesn't matter if you're for or against what's going on in Iraq. It doesn't matter if you vote Republican or Democrat. It doesn't matter if you love or hate Bush. When you see images like this, you can't help but be floored--unless you're completely, 100 percent inhuman.

Something striking about these photos is that they make it so crystal clear that all the people over there--Iraqis, Americans, everyone--just want to live. Staring into or down the barrel of a weapon, they're not thinking about Saddam, or George Bush, or oil or elections. They're praying to survive, begging for another breath--all they want to do is return to their families. It's a desire that binds people the world over. And it's important to be reminded of that.

Here's some of what we saw today:

David Leeson of the Dallas Morning News gave a 15-minute video/photography presentation of his experience being "embedded" with U.S. troops.

He led off by explaining that he's an unlikely player in the field of conflict journalism, since he hates war. But he feels his life is bound to it; it's his mission to bring back the pictures that will make people stop and consider life--how fortunate they are to have their morning cup of coffee, when across the world there is mostly carnage and suffering.

The five-minute video sample he shared, called "Death," followed a handful of U.S. soldiers encountering their first Iraqi dead on the battlefield. Their faces revealed not triumph, but trauma, confusion--and a numb sort of blankness, their selves shutting down in the interest of psychological self-preservation. They tramped slowly among the lifeless bodies, sighing deeply, shaking their heads.

"Look at them. We're wearing all this stuff," said one, gesturing at his gear, "and all that guy's got is a jacket."

The men were not proud of what they'd done. They were conflicted. Dumbfounded. "Remind me why we do this," one said.

Another soldier made his way across the field, glancing at bodies, looking dazed. Off-camera, David asked how the soldier felt seeing all this. "I don't know how to feel about that," he said. "How am I supposed to feel? It's got to be someone, right? That could be us out there. It's either them or us--if it has to be one, I'd rather it be them." But this was no grandstanding; in his statement there was none of the arrogance inherent in the one so famously uttered--"If you're not with us, you're against us."

See a video like this, and the soldiers cease being soldiers--and the "enemy" looks far from fierce. They all become people again. Something our fearless leaders often seem to forget.

David followed his video presentation with a sequence of stills:
An Iraqi man, arms out, surrendering--Christ-like in his exhausted pose, silhouetted not against the iconic cross, but before a U.S. tank, fires blazing behind him.

A close-up of a U.S. soldier gazing into the distance, the trace of two tears staining his cheeks.

A pair of shoes, attached to feet, attached to ankles twisted in an unnatural way--a very dead way. The shoes belong to an Iraqi soldier; they're a pair of brown leather loafers, like you might wear to a family dinner, except that the soles are worn and falling off, with holes gaping in the bottom.

And there was so much more. You can see a slide show of David's work here.

Next up was Lucian Perkins of the Post, who was not embedded during the war, but worked as a "unilateralist." He was on the outside looking in, unprotected, and therefore had to be constantly on the move: sleeping under bridges, in cars, he was never sure where or when he'd be safe. He said he didn't even know where the war was half the time.

His photographs showed another perspective:
In Basra--and for that matter, everywhere--he found widespread looting. At the university, they stripped away everything--even the radiators; Lucian's image captured a group of men hoisting one over a tall fence.

He said that contrary to what was aired on broadcast reports in the U.S., he saw very few celebrations going on in Iraq as the troops moved through. The day Baghdad was taken, journalists were told by editors back home, "You have to send a celebration photo; we need celebration photos!" They'd seen the images of Saddam's statue being toppled, and they wanted a piece. But the photographers on the scene were forced to reply that there wasn't anything to see: "There's nothing going on."

In the U.S., journalists sitting behind anchor desks compared the fall of the statue with the fall of the Berlin wall (where there were hundreds of thousands of people). In fact, when Saddam came tumbling down, there were only 100 people there.

Lucian also said that the number of civilian casualties has been grossly underreported. In the hospital, wounded Iraqis overflowed into the lobby, where they were being operated on without anaesthetics. The hospitals, months after Baghdad was taken, still did not have enough medicine.

One of Lucian's photographs was of a pretty little girl--a shot he'd taken in the hospital. The girl had lost 17 members of her family in one bomb blast.

And the fight wages on.