Have you ever caught a glimpse of a visual that later haunts you? As an adult, this happens to me with increasing frequency. For example, in 2004, after the abduction of Nick Berg, the American telecommunications contractor working in Iraq, I foolishly watched the beheading video that was widely circulated on the Internet. It was then that I realized I no longer had the same tolerance for gore that I once did as a teenager. Gone were the days of watching Faces of Death while scarfing down Doritos. Reality, it turns out, is far more fucked.
In a 2005 article in New York Magazine, Jonathan Hayes, a New York City Medical Examiner, and someone intimately familiar with death, said it best:
I watched the video. It took only a minute or two to find the link; I didn’t hesitate before clicking—I felt I needed to see it. The true nature of this war has been so carefully hidden, every supplied statistic and every image pruned like a prize rosebush. But the slaughter of Nick Berg seemed unspinnable; like the Abu Ghraib images, it was digital information, free to anyone who chose to look. (via New York Magazine)
I felt much the same way Hayes did, that I needed to see it. But after watching the Berg video, I was overcome by grief. I only watched it once, but the grainy footage of Berg’s ghostly face and the scream he let out as his head was removed from his body, with what appeared to be a dull machete, was intolerable. It instantly broke my heart, horrified me. I couldn’t begin to imagine the grief his friends and family endured. The Berg video, which many still claim was a hoax, haunted me for months. It also made America’s dual war effort in Iraq and Afghanistan very real.
Ian Fisher and his team prepare to clear and secure a room during a training drill (Photo: Craig F. Walker/Denver Post)
This past Monday, I felt a similar type of grief. When scrolling through the Denver Post’s story on American soldier Ian Fisher — meticulously documented by Postreporters Kevin Simpson, Michael Riley, Bruce Finley, and photojournalist Craig F. Walker for the past two years — one photo in particular (pictured above) forced me to take note. The photo depicts soldier Ian Fisher engaged in a training exercise with fellow soldiers. Does anything stand out to you? For me, the impact was immediate.
These are children.
Look at each soldier in the picture — L to R: Patrick Adams of Philadelphia, Richard Stotts of Newark, Ohio, Shadraq McBride of Florence, Ala., and Fisher. It looks as though photographer Craig F. Walker has captured a scene from a middle-schooler’s fantasy combat camp, or a gathering of dead-serious paintball enthusiasts. These can’t be the kids we’re sending to war, a handful of the 30,000 troops Obama will be dropping into Afghanistan’s hostile terrain in the coming months. Unfortunately, it is.
I know this isn’t new. We have been sending children to fight wars since the United States was founded. However, today, perhaps more so because I am now a father, photos like this weigh heavy on my mind. Unlike the Berg video, I don’t regret seeing this photograph, because it is a wake-up call. However, I regret what this photograph depicts — a country en route to more sadness, more despair. It is a fate that no rhetoric in the world can make right:
What we have fought for – and what we continue to fight for – is a better future for our children and grandchildren, and we believe that their lives will be better if other peoples’ children and grandchildren can live in freedom and access opportunity. -President Obama, December speech at West Point
However, in the name of “a better future for our children and grandchildren,” there will of course be death, blood shed, and sacrifice. And don’t be fooled by rhetoric, many children and grandchildren will not be spared — definitely not those who have already died in the wars and Afghanistan and Iraq, and those bound for unspeakable violence in the months ahead. Though Obama, to many, represents dynamic change, in so many ways he is no different than his predecessors. The decision to escalate our involvement in Afghanistan is Obama’s first step in assuming long-term ownership of the Bush regime’s Middle East shitstorm. Hopefully every last one of these individuals will return from their posts in Afghanistan and Iraq. But as we all know, odds are not in their favor.
