Several years ago Ashley Gilbertson has been photographing the rooms of the dead, specifically the participants of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; is the 4th in the US, England, Scotland, Holland, Italy, Germany and France. Some parents keep their personal belongings of the children exactly as they were when they left, and that's what Gilbertson demand register. In one, we see hockey sticks and the flag of the Toronto Maple Leafs; in another, a dolphin plush gracing a shelf full of plastic angels. Are portraits of absence, silent revelations of the personality of a (a) soldier who never coming back -photos a wound that will not heal, the pain of a family preserved in physical form.
Gilbertson wanted the audience to feel that the recent killings "were not just names and positions of people who died in another country" -and succeeded, the alarming, reach your goal. Admire his work bothers you, makes us feel transgressors, like a close look at an unbearable pain. The spaces, maintained with love, remind me of the epitaph on the tomb of the headstone of a British soldier of the First World War:
"If love could save him, he would not have died." And yet, stranger than their own photos is the need for its existence, the fact that we have to be reminded that our military dead were more than names. And it seems to me that the main feature of modern warfare is no more surprising -for technological advancement that is the use of drones or social networks by combatentes-, but the level at which the average citizen of a western democracy can to distance the responsibility for the conflicts waged in their name-and with their tax dollars.
When I was in Iraq in 2007, he feared that Americans were not paying due attention to our wars and the ride home did not do much to change that impression. I remember someone to call me in a Brooklyn bar to tell me that a guy I knew had been killed in Afghanistan.
The information that had become the scene before me, in a way, into something obscene. I knew the policy decisions taken in the United States is, after all, determined who lived and died in Iraq -and, however, the population seemed completely detached from what was happening outside. I was part of what Andrew Bacevich calls "army of one percent," the strength of the country volunteers. At the time, it seemed to explain my sense of dislocation and fed the fantasy that the return of the recruiting solve all our problems.
However, analyzing today, I realize that my time in the Middle East was marked by fierce public debate on the Army action plan. When General David Petraeus testified before Congress in September 2007, to talk about the result of the increase in troops, there were a number of exhibitionistic attitudes -as an organization against the war that placed a full-page ad in the inflamed "New York Times ", the television news analysis offering (usually tolerable) and several senators from both parties, achacando the architects of US military policy.
The main strategy of the time was the counter-insurgency that the US government guide describes as "a combination of comprehensive efforts, civilian and military, assigned to simultaneously contain the insurgency and void its root causes." Because that was our philosophy and because we had a significant number of ground forces defending various regions of Iraq, discussed metric was all related to stability.
Petraeus claiming that incidents relating to safety had decreased, civilian deaths had fallen and Iraqi security forces were standing out, while the senators questioned relentlessly divisions in Iraqi society would make these gains only an illusion if the limited achievements of military worth the extra effort, with what the US was safer (and the general admitted he did not know).
As part of the tribute project to the soldiers who participated in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the journalist Ashley Gilbertson photographed their rooms. Karina S. Lau, 20, died in Fallujah, Iraq, when the helicopter where he was shot down by insurgents, on November 2nd, 2003
This type of debate seems increasingly rare these days, in the era of counterterrorism. We do not send more troops to preserve the territory; We promote airstrikes, send drones or Special Forces to kill or capture our enemies. At best, we place some representatives on site, as we did during the early '60s, Vietnam. Instead of trying to improve societies, we focused on pursuing and killing enemies. What was a tactic that was part of the largest civil and military efforts counterinsurgency became the thing itself, even if it seems to be alienating vast segments of the world.
It's not that the ambitious goals of counterinsurgency have become less essential in the suppression of extremism; It is to simply realize that we are not good or patient enough to reach them -then why not replace them with anything we can do? As John Amble, official Army intelligence said: "Although the involvement of vulnerable populations to reduce popular support for al-Qaeda remains a strategic imperative, even the most generous records of our efforts in this direction if could sum to a mediocre performance. "
Just compare this detail to the revolutionary change in the pace of Special Operations. According to Marc Ambinder and D. B. Grady, at the beginning of the Iraq war in April 2004, the Joint Special Operations Command drove less than a dozen missions per month, but in July 2006, that number had risen to 250; with the increased use of drones, our ability to design a concentrated military force shot. Lt. Col. John Nagl booking describes the command of our special operations as "a killing machine counterterrorism on an industrial scale."
Perhaps even better for politicians -since the drones and Special Forces raids do not put the troops in a position to protect the território-, a mission to kill or capture a target can be defined as an unjustified success regardless of having a positive impact on security region in which it occurs. Our current interventions cost less (to us); place out of the public eye (you can not fit a journalist among the special operations forces, much less in a drone) and case-case basis of targeted attacks, are more likely to achieve the promised results (in this case, kill or capture highly dangerous and nasty people). The impression is that there is much less to discuss, even though violence and instability remain totally out of control.
Thus, the modern combatant operates in an increasingly serious public attention away from the space. I felt isolated as a fraction of a member of serving the country in uniform; now our military policy is carried out for only a fraction of that fraction.
27.ago.2015 - Police discovered the remains of 71 immigrants in a refrigerated truck parked on the road near Neusiedl am See, Austria
Even more problematic is the fact that the US still operate under the authorization of use of military force, for more than ten years -and taking Senators Tim Kaine and Jeff Flake, who proposed a new Aufm, Congress shows little interest in discussing a new version with more goals purposes. To ask colleagues an initiative, Kaine quoted James Madison: "The Constitution supposes what the history of all governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the division of power most interested in war and more inclined to engage in it so, as it should. It is calculated with care, built in the issue of conflict in the legislature. " And using the same caution, most members of Congress assesses how the vote on the military policy might force them to take on a sobrepensada position on an incredibly complex issue which can later become a weight-and returned the issue of war Executive.
No wonder that the first question most controversial war in the current US presidential campaign is not about the strategy we should follow in Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Pakistan, the Philippines, the Horn of Africa, Nigeria or .. . well, you get the idea. We walked quite busy. The discussion is to know whether we should or may not have invaded Iraq in 2003. For the soldier who is interested in whether his country takes its military policy seriously or not, the answer is obvious.
Men and women with whom I served in 2007 were even trying to create a better Iraq and risked their lives for it. We had resounding successes and allow ourselves to believe that conquistáramos a more lasting stability than that which existed in reality. The health and safety of the Iraqi society were important and still are. Many have created emotional bonds with the place and its people; many also went home with a completely different perception of their own citizenship.
The kids of 18, 19, 20 years that lists have no guarantee that, two years later, when you have completed the training and preparation for sending the army your country delivered them a military strategy as well hefty to run. Ensure that it has this plan is a job for all of us. If we take the wrong decision after vigorous public debate, we know that is a matter of collective failure; if we take the wrong decision without debate, there is something quite different.
Which brings me to another photo, also Gilbertson also totally different. It's a truck that was found abandoned on a road near the Austrian border with Hungary. I saw the picture sitting in a cafe in Vienna. As would be expected picture of a truck stopped on the shoulder, it's fairly boring, with few visual details that catch the eye. For me, what impresses is nothing in the image itself, but the fact of knowing that in there were the bodies of 59 men, eight women and four children, probably Syrian refugees trying to reach Germany. They suffocated. When found, their bodies were in a state of decomposition so advanced that the identification was almost impossible.
That was before the attacks in Paris, before they started using the "potential terrorist" expression to refer to these people. Naive, I thought that the humanitarian response would be clear, but, instead, had to fear for our ability to deal with the crisis of fleeing. With so many ways to hide the military action of the public, politicians find themselves exempt from the responsibility to present a coherent plan to the public. One is surprised to learn that the result is a real chaos?
The action plan which does not exceed the public scrutiny probably not survive the most difficult tests imposed by its practice in reality. However, these are the features of modern war: violence, suffering and an inherent lack of serious moral attention.
* Phil Klay is a veteran of the US Marine Corps and author of the short story collection "Redeployment".
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