Cobb: A Picture's Worth

May 06, 2004

A Picture's Worth

This is a church in Berlin. It is known as the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. Like most Americans, I am vaguely aware of who Kaiser Wilhelm was. Although the history is a couple mouseclicks away, I haven't bothered to learn much. I do know that it was gutted by American bombers when they purposely bombed the capital city of Germany during WW2. Our purpose was to kill civilians. We were engaged in total war; kill as many people as possible. So what if their churches get destroyed?

Clearly this was a beautiful building. Even in its damaged state, it retains the grandeur of its original design. However I was unable to find any pictures from before the time it was bombed. The meaning of the church has been irrevocably changed because of the damage we inflicted on the city and people of Berlin.

But you don't care. Nobody cares about Berlin. Berlin is fine.

All we care about today is a couple dozen victims of torture in a jail in Iraq. We care about a minor atrocity on the premises of the site where greater continuing atrocities was business as usual for the Baath Party. Today the world's literate and fed population, the ones with access to journalism, is focused on humiliation. Today America faces a political tragedy (perhaps), a tragedy of perception.

Phillip Kennicott of the Washington Post suggests:

But these photos are us. Yes, they are the acts of individuals (though the scandal widens, as scandals almost inevitably do, and the military's own internal report calls the abuse "systemic"). But armies are made of individuals. Nations are made up of individuals. Great national crimes begin with the acts of misguided individuals; and no matter how many people are held directly accountable for these crimes, we are, collectively, responsible for what these individuals have done. We live in a democracy. Every errant smart bomb, every dead civilian, every sodomized prisoner, is ours.

I agree with Kennicott when he says any interpretation of the pictures can only be propaganda. Whether you say it's an aberration or that it's par for the course, it's propaganda. It's spining the facts towards pro- or anti-American sentiment during a period of armed conflict. That's war propaganda by definition. So let's take it for what it is, and ignore it until after the conflict is over.

It's difficult for me to determine whether or not people care about the reasons for war, or about the conduct of any war. The antagonism and furor created by the publication of the other pictures suggests no ends are worth any means. If it can be suggested that these pictures show more about America than anyone could possibly have known before their release, then what enduring truth about America really matters?

We are not engaged in a total war. In many ways, to the detriment of our troops safety and morale, we are not engaged at all. Rather we are sitting ducks getting symbolically whacked by photographs. It's a strage occupation but hardly war. Instead, the war is one of minds, of international politics, lies, distortions and of course propaganda.

These acts will stand alone and come to signify little in world history. Like prison guards at Dachau, every soldier smiling in a photo over the spoils of war may come to regret the orders they followed in a civilian court 40 years hence. Unlike the Nazis, however, our purpose is not and was never the destruction of a people, but for their liberation. So I have confidence that the world will look at Baghdad a half century from now as they look at Berlin today. They will say that Baghdad is fine. That's the way I picture it.

Posted by mbowen at May 6, 2004 10:19 AM

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Comments

Not quite a picture of KWMC before the war but close enough.
Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church
It's named not for the Kaiser Wilhelm of WW I fame but his grandfather Kaiser Wilhelm 1(1797-1888)

Posted by: walter at May 6, 2004 11:34 PM

I wonder whether the focus on "humiliation" is an attempt by US institutions in general to shift from more problematic assertions--chiefly that US forces may be violating the Geneva Convention. One way to think about this is to examine how German prisoners of war were treated. If I recall correctly, they were treated with far more dignity than black Americans.

It appears to me that the Iraqi prisoners are being treated more like prisoners of Parchman prison.

Posted by: Lester Spence at May 7, 2004 07:46 AM