"If we’re big enough to fight a war, we should be big enough to look at it.” -Kenneth Jarecke

<p>"Hitlers have to be dealt with forcibly, the earlier the better, because it's the only action that works and will save more lives and horror than if you delay."</p>

<p>Alan, since 1945 there have been, remarquably, NO Hitlers (no such nations going to war globally and with equal power), and no first world war irresponsible and unreasoning colonial leaders with equal power to result in the slaughter of multiple millions of soldiers and citizens. There are lots of current dirty little wars based on greed, economic power, religious intolerance and social imbalances, terrorism, but their impact is by comparison much more minor. There is therefore every reason to assume that the photos mentioned in this OP may have some effect to convince citizens of many regions of the world that enough is enough. Man must assume his weaknesses and battle against them. The many thousand years of recorded history of violent action and retroaction yields nothing. New approaches must be found. Not whimpy Chamberlain attempts in the face of an impending worldwide apocalypse as clearly evident at the start of the two major world wars and fortunately not repeated since. There may never be such a thing as peace everywhere, just as marriage itself does not ensure against divorce, but the degree of barbary can be diminished greatly if the sensitivity of a large number of the world's population is awakened. Only they, and not armies, can halt such atrocities.</p>

<p>Arthur, my sister's only daughter and first born Lisa Raines was killed on 911 as a passenger on Flight 77 that the terrorists crashed into the Pentagon. I never thought in the most horrific dream that something like that would occur to someone in my family. I didn't hear the news until late in the day having worried all day about my own daughter. She was working only blocks from the World Trade Center when the attack occurred. I thought my family was safe after my daughter made it to Brooklyn only to hear the devastating news about my niece from my shocked sister and Lisa's husband. So maybe I'm proactive because I've been more personally involved. </p>

<p>However, none of us are immune. If not killing ISIS now before they become a "real" power and threat, how would you deal with them? This is not an armchair debate. It's very real. Our decisions today could save our families in the future.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>"If not killing <em>(fill in the blank with enemy of the week)</em> now before they become a "real" power and threat, how would you deal with them? This is not an armchair debate. It's very real. Our decisions today could save <em>(fill in the blank with good guys/white knights of the week)</em> in the future."</p>

</blockquote>

<p>More to the point, from the perspective of this discussion, how could photography make a difference? Perhaps in clarifying the differences between the warring factions, although I suspect photographs would only reveal that the participants are more alike than dissimilar.<br>

<br>

It's unlikely that any photo out of context can make any real difference. This type of complex coverage is better suited to video and in-depth reporting or documentaries.</p>

<p>And back to the point of the original topic, yes, gruesome photos of war should be published routinely, no holds barred, no blurred-out, pixelated or modesty bars. We need to be confronted routinely with the consequences of our actions, inactions and tacit approvals. This seems a reasonably corollary to the notion that we have a right to enjoy the peace and prosperity that comes at the cost of other human lives.</p>

<p>Lex: I'd appreciate if you commented on my post rather than changing my words and then posting it as if I quoted it that way. </p>

<p>Alright, then, your post was off topic and it's getting tiresome having to remind you to stay on topic and not digress into solely political, religious or other irrelevant commentary. We've tried every other tactic in the moderator's handbook, including private messages to avoid embarrassing anyone publicly, and nothing works. So I tried a trick from the big book of absurd logical fallacies. Do we have your attention now?</p>

 

<p>Thanks for the apology, I think.</p>

<p>From the article in the OP, its link repeated: <a title="Link added by VigLink" href="http://api.viglink.com/api/click?format=go&jsonp=vglnk_jsonp_14078174733306&key=be523a743114e35af62258230e49ff36&libId=774d78e1-0753-40c4-b5b9-4b57d84daf81&loc=http%3A%2F%2Fphoto.net%2Fcasual-conversations-forum%2F00cl0z&v=1&type=U&out=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theatlantic.com%2Ffeatures%2Farchive%2F2014%2F08%2Fthe-war-photo-no-one-would-publish%2F375762&ref=http%3A%2F%2Fphoto.net%2Fcasual-conversations-forum%2F&title=%22If%20we%E2%80%99re%20big%20enough%20to%20fight%20a%20war%2C%20we%20should%20be%20big%20enough%20to%20look%20at%20it.%E2%80%9D%20-Kenneth%20Jarecke%20-%20Photo.net%20Casual%20Photo%20Conversations%20Forum&txt=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theatlantic.com%2Ffeatures%2Farchive%2F2014%2F08%2Fthe-war-photo-no-one-would-publish%2F375762" rel="nofollow">http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/08/the-war-photo-no-one-would-publish/375762</a>/</p>

<p> </p>

<blockquote>

<p>Stella Kramer, who worked as a freelance photo editor for Life on four special-edition issues on the Gulf War, tells me that the decision to not publish Jarecke’s photo was less about protecting readers than preserving the dominant narrative of the good, clean war. Flipping through 23-year-old issues, Kramer expresses clear distaste at the editorial quality of what she helped to create. The magazines “were very sanitized,” she says. “So, that’s why these issues are all basically just propaganda.”</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Kramer viewed the coverage she participated in as propaganda, as a propaganda narrative that Gulf War I was a both a good and a clean war. Had instead the propaganda narrative been 'war is necessarily not clean yet this war is a good war": then in my view, the propaganda message that "this war is good" probably would have been remained credible to any gory photo viewer.</p>

<p>Photographs can't very often give us a precise interpretation of a particular war. The precision I want I deem lacking from the Atlantic's interpretation.</p>

<p>I still don't know if what was documented on the Highway of Death was a violation of the Third Geneva Convention, Common Article 3 where Article 3 outlaws, according to Wikipedia authors, the killing of soldiers who are out of combat. I still don't know after thoroughly reading the Atlantic's article. On that point Wikipedia quotes Schwarzkopf <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_of_Death">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_of_Death</a> :</p>

<blockquote>

<p>The first reason why we bombed the highway coming north out of Kuwait is because there was a great deal of military equipment on that highway, and I had given orders to all my commanders that I wanted every piece of Iraqi equipment that we possibly could destroy. Secondly, this was not a bunch of innocent people just trying to make their way back across the border to Iraq. This was a bunch of rapists, murderers and thugs who had raped and pillaged downtown Kuwait City and now were trying to get out of the country before they were caught.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>In other words: I didn't specifically order it; and keep in mind that we were killing criminals. <br /> <em><br /></em>Looking again to the article for clarification, I see this from Lee Corkran:</p>

<blockquote>

<p>“If pictures tell stories,” Lee Corkran tells me, “the story should have a point. So if the point is the utter annihilation of people who were in retreat and all the charred bodies ... if that’s your point, then that’s true. And so be it. I mean, war is ugly. It’s hideous.”</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Corkran seems to miss the point about which I am most interested.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Susan Sontag wrote a long, interesting, essay on this topic around 2004, it is titled "Regarding the Pain of Others". It concerns war photographs and what if any influence they should have upon us. I came across her essay, published as a short book, a few months back. I wrote a summary/review on my blog<br>

<a href="http://johnpetro.zenfolio.com/blog/2014/5/-regarding-the-pain-of-others-by-susan-sontag">http://johnpetro.zenfolio.com/blog/2014/5/-regarding-the-pain-of-others-by-susan-sontag</a><br>

Susan was a very thoughtful and skilled writer and thinker, you might track down the book and read it for yourselves.</p>

<p>Photography can be used to inform us, but it can also be used to inflame emotions. The photos Matthew Brady took were equally shocking in their day. What if they had been used by media editors to cause the public to try and end the Civil War? Would society be better off if that war had not been fought and we still had slavery? Saddam committed numberous attrocities, such as gassing the Kurds, and running dissenters through wood chippers feet first He had videos taken of the latter. I would bet none of us have ever seen those either. Photography can have real power, and it must be used wisely. I for one don't want it being used for propaganda, i.e. only one side of an issue shown. Finally, would I have taken the photo> Yes, I probably would have. I see it as freezing a moment in time. </p>

<p>Kent in SD</p>

<p>From Susan Sontag's essay: <a href="http://lensbased.net/files/catastrophe/18541-regarding_the_pain_of.pdf">http://lensbased.net/files/catastrophe/18541-regarding_the_pain_of.pdf</a></p>

<blockquote>

<p>Whether the photograph is understood as a naïve object or the work of an experienced artificer, its meaning – and the viewer's response - depends on how the picture is identified or misidentified; that is, on words.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>(Thanks John, interesting essay.)</p>

<p>I'm not so sure the extent to which viewer response depends on how a picture is identified or misidentified. I agree with Sontag's opinion that no one today believes war can be abolished. Instead, she writes: "We hope only (so far in vain) to stop genocide and to bring to justice those who commit gross violations of the laws of war (for there are laws of war, to which combatants should be held), and to be able to stop specific wars by imposing negotiated alternatives to armed conflict."</p>

<p>The Atlantic article by that standard falls short with the words it uses to frame that picture. It falls short because it doesn't discuss justice and accountability, doesn't discuss realistic hope. War is ugly, it's hideous as Corkran puts it, also saying "So be it." An army in retreat is one story and the utter annihilation of soldiers who are not in combat is another story. The Atlantic article doesn't help us sort those two stories out. Yet beyond the framing of that picture by the Atlantic's words is the sense of justice evoked in the viewer by either version of the story. Even Schwarzkopf addressed that sense of viewer justice, for me in an inadequate way, when he said "...this was not a bunch of innocent people just trying to make their way back across the border to Iraq." Maybe not, but the issue at justice is whether that bunch of people were legitimate, legal targets and Schwarzkopf knew that legality was also the issue when he said in so many words that he didn't specifically order it. So, I'm not so sure the extent to which viewer response depends on how a picture is identified or misidentified.</p>

Photos are used for propaganda by both sides and for dicey motives. They inflame passions above analysis and rational thinking. It is difficult to know their authenticity and whether they represent the "real"face of a conflict or an outlier extremist act. ( Recall the disputable atrocities pictured of the (so called)'Hun/ Boche' warriors via cartoon graphics and selected photos in Belgium 100 years ago in WWI ) On balance, I have to say I agree with Lex i.e. prefer to see the photos, and make my own judgment. We delegate that choice to media discretion or journalistic sensibility which is an editorial or business decision I expect....but I am not a party to those decisions so I do not know...

 

It is a tough photo ethical problem hard to quantify or reduce to a formula. Just today I read the picturing of militant sects in Iraq and Syria by an act of atrocity that some extremist viewers apparently applauded. How is that possible I can't imagine even.

 

From Australia I see this blacked out image..... Not a video game!. The blood is not fake. Is this the face of terrorism. If it is, then I prefer it be shown and not expurgated. No one is forced to look.

 

http://mashable.com/2014/08/11/babaric-photo-shows-australian-child-holding-severed-head-in-syria/

<p>Gerry - "Is this the face of terrorism."</p>

<p>And that question, no matter how an individual answers it, puts a frame of words around that picture even if we can't come to a judgment. From Sontag's essay, and I've edited her to remove her reference to a particular photo, the one Gerry offered works as well to illustrate her meaning:</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>Certain photographs—emblems of suffering, such as [...]—can be used like memento mori, as objects of contemplation to deepen one's sense of reality; as secular icons, if you will. But that would seem to demand the equivalent of a sacred or meditative space in which to look at diem. Space reserved for being serious is hard to come by in a modern society, whose chief model of a public space is the mega-store (which may also be an airport or a museum).</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Modern society, I add, where it seems more and more the public space is a mega-store for propaganda from all sides, where at worst all of us can unfairly be viewed as always having dicey motives.</p>

"Alan, since 1945 there have been, remarquably, NO Hitlers (no such nations going to war globally and with equal power),

"

 

Oh but we have had plenty of little Hitlers, tiny Stalins,and mini-Maos in that time. Global war is now thermo-nuclear war

and there are likely lots of politically ambitious and charming psychotic potential mass murders out there who'd love to

push the button to ignite a thermo-nuclear globe girdling holocaust.

<p>Agree with ellis above in that we've had plenty of "tiny" Stalins in our own time--Pol Pot, Rowanda, Saddam, etc. They only lacked the means, not the motives. Many feel that Putin has been going down this road by bullying Georgia, Crimea, and now Ukraine. He's hardly tiny and has nuclear weapons. Photographers reporting on Ukraine have been shot.</p>

<p>Kent in SD</p>

<p>The photos of atrocities involve just about every country in the world with an army and engagements. But it is also a question of scale. Hitler's actions led to the deaths of 32 million persons. That has fortunately been very absent since 1945. Terror and terrorists will likely always be present, but perhaps photography may have some small effect in alerting populations to the inhumanity of those actions and reduce the traction for terrorism or accepted atrocities amongst the citizens in countries where that exists.</p>

<p>Russia, like the old Soviet Union, is not stupid. They're not going to use nuclear weapons and be destroyed. I don't think Iran would use them either if they produced them. I'm more concerned about Islamists who have a religious fervor and are willing to become martyrs. If a small group seizes nuclear weapons from let's say Pakistan, would they use them? That's why stopping ISIS could be paramount. Of course, it's possible that ISIS, which is run by al-Baghdadi, a savvy leader but who wears expensive watches, will turn out to be just another terror state run by a tin pot dictator who won't go that far in order to protect himself and his Swiss bank account. Being a martyr may be for others, not him. But do we take the chance?</p>

<p>Speaking of ISIS, they really have learned how to use photography and videos of summary executions as propaganda. Look at the terror and intimidation they created in the minds of the civilian populations to cower and the Iraqi military to cut and run. How do these images effect people to want to get into war or stay away from it? Certainly they are attracting the psychos and megalomaniacs of the world to join ISIS. But what about the rest of us? Do we become more militant and strike them to protect ourselves. Or are we intimidated as well to stay away? These are very current questions for Americans in particular. Having tired of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, most of us would like to stay out. But if we do that and the situation becomes worse, should we expend more blood and treasure? Are these images effecting the public's decision, the President's decision? What about Europeans and others? You're also not exempt from attacks. Have these images effected you on how to deal with ISIS?</p>

<p>Alan those specifics of 'necessity' aren't as important or interesting to me as is the subject of how they fit into the cyclic pattern that we term war. An article quotes Tacitus:<br /> <a href="http://www.thesonsofscotland.co.uk/xilegion.htm">http://www.thesonsofscotland.co.uk/xilegion.htm</a></p>

<blockquote>

<p>"'They could not wait to cut throats, hang, burn, crucify,' wrote the Roman historian Tacitus. 'In the groves of their terrible dark goddess, Andraste, they tortured their captives to death, sewing the severed breasts of the women to their lips, and impaling others on stakes driven through their bodies. 'No cruelty was too great."</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Tacitus used words to evoke pictures in the minds of his readers. Now we have pictures and videos to instantaneously message something like abandon all hope those who enter here. Off his readers went and on it goes.</p>

<p>The sense that about such horrors, the sense that it is necessary to <em>do</em> something: 'Necessity' is part of war's allure, part of the awe in our response to that tactic of shock and awe. Recoiling from such images and forming a resolve is just a piece from a pattern. We can hardly <em>not</em> go, and that response is part of the entirety we can rightly call war's cycle.<br /> <br />From Sontag's essay "Men make war. Men (most men) like war, since for men there is "some glory, some necessity, some satisfaction in fighting" that women (most women) do not feel or enjoy....Can her recoil from its allure be like his?" And to the Spanish Civil War many went with their feeling of necessity.</p>

<p>Sontag quotes Virginia Woolf in a discussion about war's images:</p>

<blockquote>

<p>"You, Sir, call them "horror and disgust." We also call them horror and disgust…War, you say, is an abomination; a barbarity; war must be stopped at whatever cost. And we echo your words. War is an abomination; a barbarity; war must be stopped."</p>

</blockquote>

<p>"If we’re big enough to fight a war, we should be big enough to look at it.” -Kenneth Jarecke</p>

<p>Are we big enough, then, to recognize war as part of a cyclical pattern of thought, feeling, and behavior?</p>

<p><a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=uroboros&rlz=1T4NDKB_enUS521US521&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=p73rU-KMAtL6oASLhIGABQ&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAQ&biw=1768&bih=1133">https://www.google.com/search?q=uroboros&rlz=1T4NDKB_enUS521US521&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=p73rU-KMAtL6oASLhIGABQ&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAQ&biw=1768&bih=1133</a></p>

<p>In those images of a tail devouring serpent: where the eating of its tail births its entire body, which is again fed back into the serpent, consuming itself and birthing itself in an unending cycle. That is a picture of war and a picture of other repetitive, self-birthing and self-consumptive behaviors or syndromes [like co-dependency] that proceed along unchanged until insight, hopefully, breaks the cycle and introduces hope and change into the picture.</p>

<p>So all images of war are images of the minutiae of a serpent eating its tail. Just showing the particulars in images doesn't make anyone bigger. It's my belief that we must find the words that, as a frame for such images, quarantine that behavior.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>I would like to know why anyone would presume that it would be possible (or desirable) to take discussions of politics out of discussions of photographic censorship. Censorship of both photos and words is an inherently political process.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

Putin has shown himself to be a murderous thug for years now, but he's not driven by the same pathology as Hitler,

Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, and Saddam Hussein. He's a classic bully.

<p>Putin? He rides horses doesn't he? <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/12/worl-photo-caption-contest-shirtless-putin_n_3263512.html">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/12/worl-photo-caption-contest-shirtless-putin_n_3263512.html</a> </p>

 

Interesting article on the demographics of those who commit genocide: http://www.psmag.com/navigation/politics-and-

law/demographics-genocide-participates-mass-murder-87698/

<p>Ellis, you are off, off, off, off the topic. Our dear moderators must all have gone to the beach !!</p>