i think we should see all the pictures

[barbtries]

Rachel just did a commentary on how the worst pictures from disasters and tragedies and war mongering are kept from the public because we "don't need to see that."
well, i think we do. maybe if "we" are exposed to the full scope of the horror, more people will stop being so complacent about war and its attendant atrocities.
"we" aren't children; "we" are the people, and "we" need to know what happens in war. i almost feel as if it is a responsibility to look at all of it. don't clean it up, don't shield my eyes as if i'm a little girl who should not be exposed. Let me know what war is really all about: waste, destruction, unnecessary, premature, gory, horrible death of innocents.
it should not be easy to turn away. that's my opinion. i am very disturbed by what happened yesterday and don't want to forget it; i want to be able to affect some peace in this fucking world even as i feel utterly helpless to do so.

i feel this applies to the deaths of the children in Gaza and wherever war is raging in this fucked up world at any time. how do we get to peace?! maybe if more of us had a fuller apprehension of the horror of war we could get closer. i don't know.

this is coming from a bereaved mother who was excused from identifying the dead body of her daughter who died a violent death by car. i do not advocate seeing pictures that are personally identifying the victims because of the pain those would cause their loved ones. this is a conflict for me admittedly and i have not resolved it in my mind.

[vanlassie]

1. I'm so sorry for your loss.

[barbtries]

2. thank you

so many families going through it right now, makes my heart heavy. it's all so unnecessary but it goes on and on and on.

[malaise]

3. I think those who want to see should be able to see

I never wanted to see my favorite cousin's body after he was murdered.
I can't imagine what you went through.

[barbtries]

33. thanks malaise

i knew a man once who found his favorite cousin's head. just her head.

[Ineeda]

4. I, too, am conflicted.

I often wonder if seeing the red swamp of gore and goo that used to be 20 babies in their school would break any gun humper's heart. Same for the 'collateral damage' of war. Even that term removes the human factor.

The world (and especially the future cannon-fodder and their families) seeing Vietnam battleground shots via war correspondents and the images of rows of flag-draped coffins being off-loaded from military transport, IMO, helped end that horrible conflict. No more 'war correspondents, no more coffin images allowed. Why? Sensitivity? Privacy? Yeah, sure.
Yes, there are sickies who would get off on it, and assholes like Murdoch would make a buck. But the reality might generate horror (as it should), then outrage, then activism and change.

[barbtries]

39. that's my thinking

we're too far removed. but maybe we are too inured as well, and it wouldn't make a rat's ass bit of difference. i don't know.

[Boom Sound 416]

5. I think overtime it would only desensitize more

As in sandyhook and other tragedies

[LiberalElite]

9. Desensitization is a psychological defense - just the headlines

can desensitize us - "Mass Shooting in ____________ [fill in the blank]" and some think "just another day in the USA" and give up.

[Boom Sound 416]

13. Sure. All things can desensitize

But certainly not equally.

Furthermore without a headline how the news story be conveyed.

That's the least 'graphic' conveyance.

[Scarsdale]

6. Condolences

So sorry for your loss. Having lost a child I understand what you are going through. Nothing fills the void, nothing. These countries might not be so quick to resort to violence if people like McCain, Graham and the other gop nutcases were not on TV constantly, advocating for war, war, war. Bomb, bomb, bomb is all they want. Other people see that, and think the US will help them out once the violence starts. We have lost too many troops, shed way too much blood, and this country needs fixing but can not "afford" it. Strange, there always seems to be enough $$$$ for wars, butting into other countries business. Maybe the next elections will get the deadwood out, the do-nothings and put people into office who REALLY care about THIS country, not the agitators who are lining their pockets with the cash from lobbyists for the weapons industry and companies like Halliburton.

[barbtries]

34. let's hope so.

i am sorry for your loss as well. nothing worse.

[Divernan]

7. Iconic photo of naked Vietnamese girl burned by napalm

was featured on the front page of the New York Times the day after it was taken and inflamed opposition to the war both in the US and abroad. It later earned a Pulitzer Prize and was chosen as the World Press Photo of the Year for 1972. The Times editors were at first hesitant to consider the photo for publication because of the nudity, but eventually approved it.

The U.S. Govt. learned the lesson, since applied, to tightly control the media's access to war coverage. That's why I rely on international press coverage.

After snapping the photograph, Ut took Kim Phuc and the other injured children to Barsky Hospital in Saigon, where it was determined that her burns were so severe that she probably would not survive. After a 14-month hospital stay and 17 surgical procedures, however, she was able to return home. Ut continued to visit her until he was evacuated during the fall of Saigon.

Adult life
As a young adult, while studying medicine, Phúc was removed from her university and used as a propaganda symbol by the communist government of Vietnam. In 1986, however, she was granted permission to continue her studies in Cuba. She had converted from her family's Cao Đài religion to Christianity four years earlier.[11] Phạm Văn Đồng, the then-Prime Minister of Vietnam, became her friend and patron. After arriving in Cuba, she met Bui Huy Toan, another Vietnamese student and her future fiancé. In 1992, Phúc and Toan married and went on their honeymoon in Moscow. During a refuelling stop in Gander, Newfoundland, they left the plane and asked for political asylum in Canada, which was granted. The couple now lives in Ajax, Ontario near Toronto,[12] and have two children. In 1996, Phúc met the surgeons who had saved her life. The following year, she passed the Canadian Citizenship Test with a perfect score and became a Canadian citizen.

[13]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phan_Thi_Kim_Phuc

[cascadiance]

24. It's not so much the graphic explicitness that works, but the depiction of horrible emotion...

That picture doesn't show her running with an arm cut off, etc. Without a note on it, you might not even know she was burned. It is her horror running unnaturally naked in the streets away from something that communicates the horror she's feeling. THAT is what is needed in press photography in war. A sense of knowing the victims to some extent and seeing their horror that they are feeling so that we can understand how terrible war is to anyone who has to go through it.

That should be what the media publishes instead of numbers, etc. that they typically do today to minimize what is going on in many places. An onsite photographer or reporter that can communicate one way or the other how you can KNOW the victims themselves or feel the same pain they do is what works. That is also why what that other reporter who played soccer in Gaza with those kids shortly before they were blasted by Israeli strikes was communicating so effectively. A picture of the kid's bodies without an explanation of how he came to know them, etc. wouldn't work, but that he knew them and then we go through what he is feeling of having his guts wrenched out seeing that they were killed is what has us feel that war is terrible to real people, no matter which "side" they are on.

There shouldn't be limits on graphic nature of a photograph. But they shouldn't just be looking for graphic pictures to publish too. It is journalists doing their jobs helping us feel what those there feel is what is needed!

I remember when I was young that I worked at a photo processing plant. Every once in a while we would get a whole set of photographs from morgues/police of autopsies go through. Without knowing who they were, without knowing how they died other than just seeing their dead bodies from all angles, I could see that seeing those every day in that fashion would desensitize you. I was curious the first few times they went through, but after a while, I avoided looking at them, as they just hurt to see them as graphic images without knowing the dead persons' stories. I could see how some could in an unhealthy fashion want to see those all of the time. That is the kind of graphic photo presentation I don't want to see the press become.

[Divernan]

25. excellent analysis of the psychology involved - thank you!

[barbtries]

40. there was a picture that i felt accomplished that

from the earlier days of gw's war in Iraq.

i'll never forget this picture just as i will never forget the picture from Vietnam: both pictures of children victimized by the US military. yet here we are.

[barbtries]

36. wow

thank you for all that history. i am so happy that she was able to go on and lead a full life!

[BrotherIvan]

38. I agree very much with your post and the OP

I am sometimes appalled at myself when I turn my brain off from the horror. This is being done in my name. People are suffering and dying. If it wasn't so easy to not think about it, we would feel more urgency to stop it now. That picture communicated the horror to the world. Just like picture of Civil Rights marchers being attacked. Just like the unimaginable concentration camps. Just like so many iconic pictures have done. The "shielding" of the world from atrocities is not done with good intentions.

[barbtries]

41. my point exactly.

it's done in order to perpetuate even more atrocities, to keep that war machine oiled. in a sense, it is really dishonest as well as disrespectful to the people.

[BrotherIvan]

43. It's part of the plan I think

They use 1984 as an instruction manual. Extreme entertainment diversions, working two to three jobs so you're too tired to do anything else. The dumbing down of the media and education. Anti-intellectualism and the contraction of the language. Celebrities as politicians (like our Governator and Raygun). Extreme religion as a tool. They don't want people to think, to come to their own conclusions. Unfortunately, it's working.

[barbtries]

49. i think so too.

the only thing that gives me hope is that i truly do believe that the real power is in the people, and they will rise. i will likely be dead by then, but my grandchildren and their children will quite possibly be around for it.

[BrotherIvan]

50. I hope so too

If history tells us anything, it's that the people won't stand for this kind of thing forever.

[DemocraticWing]

57. I wrote a paper on that photo in high school.

We had to write something about an image that was historically important, and I used that and drew parallels between that and the Iraq War which was going on at the time.

My teacher was a Republican, but I got an A.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

8. Isn't that how the antiwar movements in the 60s-70s

went mainstream? They actually finally started seeing the horrible suffering our armies were inflicting, and demanded we stop the killing? And then someone somewhere along the line got the bright idea that the US public shouldn't see such images any more, and we stopped showing mangled bodies and flag draped coffins on tv, and we wound up in perpetual wars, because so few people are outraged at the violence when we never actually see it in its gory detail.

[tecelote]

19. Vietnam was the last time reporters really showed what was going on.

I remember my parents saying that the news was more violent than any movie. But, seeing our young men die on TV turned many people against the war.

That's why the MIC lobbied Washington to stop showing the realities of war.

If we knew what we were doing today, most Americans would be horrified.

Instead, we're kept in the dark and the evil is allowed to continue in our name.

[barbtries]

32. that, maybe,

but more so i think it was the death toll got so high.

[The Wizard]

10. Having once had a front row seat for war

I'd say yes people have to know it's not a video game or drive by shooting. It's a dirty, grueling, 24/7, unforgiving cluster fuck that demoralizes the participants and leaves victims a lifetime of pain and horrible memories. The only winners are the war profiteers.

[HockeyMom]

18. Kent State

It works the same for gun violence. There was that iconic picture of that coed crying over the dead body of her friend. That coverage also was shown on the nightly news and all over the print media at the time.

As has been said, it is not a video game either.

[kiva]

61. It was a compelling picture.

Interestingly the girl wasn't a student at Kent State - her name is Mary Ann Vecchio, she was only 14 and had run away from home. She was at the college to join the protesters and had never met Jeffrey Miller, the young man who had been killed.

[DeadLetterOffice]

20. +1

It's a dirty, grueling, 24/7, unforgiving cluster fuck that demoralizes the participants and leaves victims a lifetime of pain and horrible memories.

Best summary I think I've ever read. So sorry you developed it from first hand knowledge.

[barbtries]

42. you must know better than me

how terrible it is...but i know i want it to end. i am glad you are here.

[heaven05]

11. americans, by and large

are a protected, cushioned and insulated bunch. The reality(s) of what human beings do to other humans on a large scale makes for life long videos that can never be erased. Take it from someone who knows. I do offer my sympathies for your loss. I had to identify my sister after her murder and that was extremely difficult and unsettling. War photos and the like would probably shake people out of their complacency about what's happening elsewhere in the world. Photos of the carnage of yesterdays travesty with all the dead children would shake a lot of people up. The four Palestinian children blown to pieces by that Israeli shell would shake up people. What's left after a suicide bomber blows him or herself to smithereens might shake people up. Or would it? By that I mean, would people crawl deeper in their holes and become inured to the carnage going on in the world and get even more complacent? Or would enough people, after seeing the innocent dead from Iraq, Syria, Ukraine, Boko Haram travesties, the mass shooting in America, especially the Columbine and Sandy Hook insanities, rise up and say enough!!!!!! And the carnage stop? Can rational, caring, sane people in the streets in the hundreds of thousands be enough to cause a solution to be found for the proliferation of lethal killing instruments in the wrong hands? I, like you, can only hope that would be the end result. May you find peace, I did somewhat.

[barbtries]

44. i am so sorry for your loss

and can only imagine that terrible task...my son and i went to the hospital the next day to see Bekah, but were persuaded not to. i am glad for that, and our decision was validated in many different ways by different people.
i have recovered to a huge extent, probably as much as i ever will. she's with me. she's dead. life goes on. it's been 13 years since she died. 13 years tomorrow that is. so she's on my mind somewhat more, and somewhat more mournfully, than usual.
i begin to doubt that there are enough empathetic, caring, respectful people - people who recognize the innate humanity and worth of each and every one of us - to bring the world around to peace. i am convince that it will never happen in my lifetime. if the earth and humanity survive, i maintain hope that one day we will evolve and make it real.

[grasswire]

52. yes. European friends comment on how protected American children are.

From war, from famine, from so much more misery than children in other parts of teh world.

May we be mindful of the greater terror other children endure.

[Dustlawyer]

12. Sorry for your loss, only time helps, heaping amounts are required! Lost my son in 93, still hurts,

just not always so raw.

I am afraid the horrible reaction to the gruesome pictures of dead and dying children and adults would be used to manipulate us more for revenge, than affect a change to stop it! It kinda cuts both ways!

[barbtries]

31. something i hadn't considered,

and certainly possible. they sure capitalized on 911 in just that way. the bastards.

[Stuart G]

14. After World War II, Eisenhower made available to every movie theater

pictures of the allies liberating the concentration camps. The idea was to show the "horrors of war"

The collection of Nazi footage along with the films that were made with the liberation of the camps, were compiled in a film called
"Night and Fog"....the most horrific film ever made..1955, 32 minutes..Director: Alain Resnais

Writer: Jean Cayrol (commentary)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048434/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

Please, read the first review at the bottom of the first page, then please read the next few reviews by people who have seen this on the second page of reviews. If you read those reviews, you will know what I mean. thank you

[barbtries]

46. i just put it at number 1

on my dvd queue. thank you.
i may have seen it, but i think what i saw was an american-made film and i don't recall the title. the footage was unforgettable, and sickening. and the question always comes up how can people do this to people? they have to dehumanize their victims. i can see many americans using this device to for instance vilify the child refugees pouring into the US. they deserve to be treated as humans.

[Stuart G]

53. You would have remembered the awful sad music..

This has English subtitles. Be warned, it gets worse as it goes along...Man's inhumanity to man..unbelievable!!! I recall seeing and hearing about this 55 years ago, as a kid. Later, I said to myself, at least we will not do this again, ever. Then there was Cambodia in the 70s, and later Yugoslavia, more killing going on now in Africa..even here, and, the name calling of these kids. Of course, name calling, and hating is not killing, but the USA has killed like this too...Wounded Knee, massacre at Sand Creek ...What are we, anyway??perhaps that cannot be answered..

[TBF]

15. I agree Barb -

and very sorry for your loss. I can't imagine having to deal with that (I have a daughter as well).

[barbtries]

37. thank you TBF

[Capt. Obvious]

16. Yes we should

I argued that when we went to Iraq. We should see the bodies coming home. We should see the mutilated bodies over their. We should see the Blackwater bodies being dragged through Fallujah.

People won't be so gung ho about sending others to war.

[barbtries]

47. yep. short of being there

how else can it be conveyed? the horror of it.

[ReRe]

17. I feel as conflicted...

... but what we have is a society, half of which seems to not have the ability to feel empathy. Even if you showed them, they probably wouldn't feel anything. It's maddening. When you run into these people, you just want to slap them awake. I do believe that world peace might be very possible if there was more empathy, if people could put themselves in someone else's shoes. Ronald Reagan didn't help, with the Me-Me-Me "I-got-mine" propaganda that so many bought into,
turning good people into vengeful, heartless, selfish monsters.

[barbtries]

30. i agree

i look around me and wonder who the fuck are we, as a people. how can people not care about people?

[MerryBlooms]

21. Business Insider yesterday, posted at least one photo

that showed dead bodies on the ground near a firefighter. They are the only news site I've seen so far that has not pixilated the bodies.

I'm terribly sorry for your loss.

[barbtries]

29. thank you MerryBlooms

[TNNurse]

22. As a nurse

I have participated in viewing wreck victims with family members. It takes some judgment. Do you cover the worst wounds? Do you let them pull back a sheet to see something horrific? Would they rather not have that memory? Everyone is different and it is very hard to judge.
I once helped care for a young man who was shot and lived less than two days. Because of his wound he was given massive amounts of IV fluids to keep him alive and the effect was very disturbing. His face was grossly swollen, beyond recognition. His immediate family saw him. His teenage friends were angry they could not visit, they like all young people thought "they had the right". The family agreed with the nurses to limit visitors. It has been more than thirty years, I did not know him but the memory of his tragic appearance has stayed with me. I am glad those young people who loved him do not have that memory. I think of his poor parents and siblings.

Many people who are very sick or badly injured are adamant that they do not want people to see them that way. It is a matter of privacy and dignity. I have cautioned family members of sedated or comatose patients about who should be allowed to visit. "Would your husband, wife, father mother want their neighbor, coworker, church member to see them this way?

Should we see the flag draped coffins? Absolutely! Should we see their battered bodies before? Do we have the right? Should immediate family, certainly with some preparation and the knowledge that they are not required to do so.

The horror of this and other incidents needs to be shared so we can maybe learn, but we have to consider the dignity of the individual.

There is not one answer.

[barbtries]

23. absolutely true, every word.

i am conflicted. what would it take to end war in this world?
my son and i went to see Bekah at the hospital the morning after she died. instead of being taken to her, we were put in a room and a nurse came in holding her chart and just kind of laid out the timeline for me. she never said, don't look at her! but everything she said was saying just that. after a while i looked at my son and said, "we'll never see Bekah again."
her best friend was distraught that we would not have an open casket. not long after Bekah died she began seeing a paramedic who looked at Bekah's file and he told her, "you could still tell she was pretty. but she was one of the bad ones." So her best friend got a measure of peace from that.
we did make a conscious (as conscious as possible in the context of the shock) decision to bury her without ever looking at her again. for me it was worse not to be able to hug her than not to look at her - i always knew i preferred to remember her alive and vital and beautiful as she was.
her anniversary is tomorrow so i guess i'm feeling a bit maudlin. peace.

[grilled onions]

27. You Can't Judge War By Keeping One Eye Closed

Both eyes open should be for everyone. Casualties happen and war does not care which side is the victim nor what age. It might destroy the body but also the mind and the spirit. It's one size fits all. If war mongers insist on it and constantly recruit soldiers and tax dollars then they should prepare those who want to enlist as well as those at home stumping for war dollars then they should also "illustrate" the part that no one wants to talk about. Oh the mongers are a slick group. They tap dance around the down side of war(any war) that might make us think or actually convince others that there must be a better way to peace than killing.

[upaloopa]

28. This is what I see as the usefulness of putting the

images out there for the public to view. First you can turn your gaze away if you want or not it is your choice not someone else's who has manipulative motives.
Secondly, as a Vietnam vet I hesitate to talk about personal events from the war and people don't want to hear about them but the images if presented accurately leave a record that can lead to an individual's research and learning or a group discussion that otherwise would not take place.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

35. War would end if the dead could return. Stanley Baldwin

[JI7]

45. the images of people trapped in buildings on 9/11 and falling have never left me

not even the most graphic ones. but people still alive waiting/hoping to be saved . and then those who were falling.

[barbtries]

48. yeah.

there was one woman in particular i tend to remember when i look back, standing near a blown out window...doomed.
911 happened less than 2 months after my daughter died. i remember feeling as if my veins had been filled with lead - it weighed me so.

and so what was gw's response? oh goody, we get to throw a war! gawd damn them.

[JI7]

51. wow, i can't imagine what you would have went through

just dealing with that horrible loss and then this other thing happens.

and yes, Bush just made things even worse. he called on americans to go shopping and then caused disaster around the world and country.

[Jake2413]

54. The Press had a large part in ending the Viet Nam war

The daily front page pictures of the fighting and death drove public opinion against the war.

[Scuba]

55. You are very wise. Thanks barbtries.

[barbtries]

56. thank you Scuba

[Uncle Joe]

58. I agree with your take on it.

I'm also sorry that you lost your daughter.

Is that your daughter in your avatar?

Thanks for sharing, barbtries.

[barbtries]

59. thanks Uncle Joe

yep. that's my girl

[Uncle Joe]

60. She was a beautiful young lady.

[barbtries]

63. thanks. inside and out