"It is only the dead who have seen the end of war." Plato



Unlike the years of Vietnam, personal tragedies of Iraq and Afghanistan have been deliberately hidden from us. Shown only in newspapers, mostly at the local level.

Did you know that more U.S. troops were killed in Afghanistan during 2008 than in any other years since the U.S. invaded in 2001? To date, 1135 soldiers have died there. 4278 soldiers have died in Iraq. And almost 100,000 civilians have also lost their lives.

This story just about broke my heart.

  
Anthony Jones came home to Georgia on leave to meet his newborn son. He wasn't very sanguine about returning to Iraq. "I want to live this week like it is my last," he said. "The chances of going over a third time and coming back alive are almost nil. I've known too many who have died." Sgt. Anthony G. Jones, 25, was killed by a roadside bomb in Baghdad, Iraq three weeks later. (And good god, on my birthday).

We have been given censored, sanitized or deliberately misdirected and inflammatory versions of exactly what the government and the military wanted us to see... not one frame more.

Vietnam

Those of us who lived during the Vietnam era might not remember much but no one could forget the pictures. Vietnam was truly the first war to assault our nation's collective sight as well as our souls.

Some of the images are so engraved in the public consciousness we don't have to see them at all -- they appear in a flash behind our eyes at the mention of "the naked little girl screaming from napalm burns"  (above) or "the helicopter evacuating people from the roof of the US Embassy" (shown at the top). Or "civilian with gun to head."

 

All the countless pictures of death and destruction and pain in Vietnam bore eloquent witness to our outrage. They were the hooks on which we hung our grievances at the injustice of an abominable war.  

Journalists with unprecedented access took life-threatening chances to bring us photographs and videos. They defined a disastrous chapter in American history as never before. And became a horrific reminder of the impact "freedom of the press" could have on our collective psyches.

 

If you remember or have seen clips of television news during Vietnam, you know it was the real deal. Network news honchos back then may have pandered to their sponsors' censors, but never to the federal government's.

Never has the media so caved and cowered under government imposed censorship than today's psuedo-infotainment conglomerates that pass for news organizations in today's world.

Show Us Body Bags and Coffins

 

In the beginning of the Iraq war the government allowed some journalists to join certain military units. We gained a new word: embedded. Intrepid journalists were embedded here, there and everywhere.

But we at home weren't seeing anything unique, unusual or even particularly gruesome. We certainly weren't seeing news.

More than 30 years after Vietnam we see so much fictional gore on prime time TV that the pictures they showed us seemed ho-hum.  Even scenes of actual beheadings on the Internet haven't managed to shake our collective lack of response to horror.

We're numb. Jaded. Bombarded by fictional television, movie and video game savagery. Our ability to summon shock and outrage at blood and guts has swirled down too many fake viscera filled drains.

We've absorbed violence into our daily lives in such a way as to minimize its impact on anything but our eyes. It's become theater. Incredible. Phantasmagoric.

Even so, we're still not seeing anything we haven't seen before. And worse, we've been denied information and access far too long in the holy name of "national security."

Everybody carries on about the gruesome and disturbing pictures of torture by our own government under that same banner, but no one has yet stood up, organized, protested, demanded full accountability of ALL involved for all the atrocities of these unholy wars.

War and torture will never penetrate our self-absorption until it's made personal and much more real.

 
A U.S. soldier cradles an Iraqi child wounded by the blast of a suicide bomber.

Are we numb to the pictures? Or can television bring the reality of war home to us uncensored? During Vietnam, it gave us live firestorms of battle.

Far more stunning were the quiet scenes at Dover Air Force Base and others around the country showing grief-stricken families meeting the coffins of loved ones killed in action.

You could barely breath, let alone speak as flag-draped symbols of heroism accompanied by solemn soldiers marched onto the screen and into our consciousness.

Not a drop of blood. Just unadulterated reality. Of loss. And despair. 

For many Vietnam-era viewers it was the nightly sight of dozens, hundreds, thousands of flag covered coffins on military tarmac that pulled them off their couches and out into the streets to howl in protest.