The Question On The Images Of War

Christa Blackmon over at LGM has a post on those pictures of the Mother of All Bombs that Trump recently dropped in Afghanistan. Most of the stories we heard about that attack focused on the bomb itself and hardly any of the coverage explored the actual damage the bomb created. In fact, some of the media stories dwelt on the possibility that the attack was designed as a signal to North Korea, ignoring the very real effects in Afghanistan entirely.

As Blackmon notes, "If images of war set the tone for public support, then the best images are the ones that tell almost no story at all...In combing through numerous articles, videos, and commentary over the event [the bombing] I am certain about one thing: the weapon is the only story available to be told". In addition, even the pictures that the Defense Department provided gave no real perspective on the damage that had been wrought. This is a constant with most of the official footage we receive. For example, these were the most frequent pictures we saw and they told us virtually nothing about the results of the bombing.

As Blackmon admits, the Defense Department is unwilling to release any photos that would show the actual destruction that was caused and the strike may have taken place in an isolated area that independent journalists would have a tough time reaching. And, in fact, the Guardian finally did get reporters to the scene but the story provides very little insight into the attack's effectiveness.

On the other hand, the horrific pictures of the men, women, and children dead or suffering after the chemical attack in Syria apparently prompted the quick response of the Trump administration, with reports that Ivanka was particularly troubled by those images. Other images of the Syrian civil war have also had a similar impact, including the Syrian boy who washed up dead on a beach and became the face of the refugee crisis, the dust-covered child sitting in an ambulance, and the pictures of the totally bombed out buildings in Aleppo. Unfortunately, however, none of those images have seemingly brought Syria any closer to peace.

But many of those images are "clean" in the sense that the bodies are clearly whole, not bloody and dismembered which is how a majority of the innocent victims have died. Those other images are certainly available if you care to seek them out but are largely ignored by the mainstream media for the obvious reason that they are horrific and deeply disturbing.

In addition, there is the concern that we will become desensitized if we are continually bombarded by the most gruesome images of war or, on the other hand, that those images will provoke a retaliation that has not been thoroughly thought through, which may be what happened with Trump's Syrian missile attack.

These are difficult questions and I do not have the answers. What I do know is that the images we got from the Defense Department are almost meaningless in actually describing what happened. There is absolutely no reason for the networks to be running these pictures and videos virtually 24/7 in the days after the attack if the images provide no meaning. All that does is provide more propaganda for "a lovely, bloodless, corpseless war, just the sort the politicians love", as Blackmon quotes David Hackworth as saying.