Why Are We So Blind To The True Horrors Of War?

News items like "...four Canadian soldiers were killed today when their tank was blown up by a roadside bomb" have become so commonplace we scarcely notice, barely pause in what we're doing. Have you ever stopped to think what those soldiers felt as that happened? What it's like to be inside a tank when it explodes - the noise, the power, the searing heat - how your body feels as it is torn apart?

From Chris Hedges, originally published in Truthdig:

"If we really saw what war does to young minds and bodies, it would be harder to embrace the myths propagated by our warmongering government."

In this article Hedges reviews two haunting books of war photographs: Peter van Agtmael’s "2nd Tour Hope I don’t Die" and Lori Grinker’s "Afterwar: Veterans From a World in Conflict." He does not mince words, and the mental images that arise on reading the article are sharp and penetrating. But as powerful as they are, they only hint at the effect of the photographs. Even so, he describes the photographs as "...shadows, for only those who go to and suffer from war can fully confront the visceral horror of it, but they are at least an attempt to unmask war’s savagery."

An excerpt from the article:

Filmic and most photographic images of war are shorn of the heart-pounding fear, awful stench, deafening noise and exhaustion of the battlefield. Such images turn confusion and chaos, the chief elements of combat, into an artful war narrative. They turn war into porn. Soldiers and Marines, especially those who have never seen war, buy cases of beer and watch movies like "Platoon," movies meant to denounce war, and as they do so revel in the despicable power of the weapons shown. The reality of violence is different. Everything formed by violence is senseless and useless. It exists without a future. It leaves behind nothing but death, grief and destruction.

For the full article on AlterNet, click here.

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I don't believe in guarded borders and I don't believe in hate
I don't believe in generals or their stinking torture states
but when I talk to the survivors of things too sickening to relate
if I had a rocket launcher, I would retaliate
- Bruce Cockburn
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