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Under the Sun Cynthia Oi |
Photos of soldiers’ coffins
display tangible toll of warTHIS guy I know says he doesn't read newspapers these days, doesn't watch CNN or network news and tunes his radio strictly to music stations or listens to CDs.
An intelligent, educated fellow, he used to keep up with local, national and world events, but a little more than a year after the terrorist attacks, he began to shut out some of the noise, skimming only headlines while skipping the stories, catching just a few seconds of the trailers on MSNBC before thumbing the remote past news channels to movies and ESPN.
More recently, he put a full lid on it. An avid outdoorsman, he restricts information intake mostly to sports magazines and was upset when his favorite, Outside, did a take on drilling for oil in the Arctic wildlife refuge, for him a touchstone of President Bush's unrelenting assault on environmental protections.
It is all too depressing, he said. The world mutated by 9/11 and the war in Iraq involves too much tragedy, too much death, too many bad decisions by cynical politicians, too many self-serving policies coming from a White House and a president hell-bent on re-election and a place in history.
He's right; it's ugly out there. A day doesn't go by without dozens of sickening or sorrowful occurrences. If you're already in a gloomy mood, checking the day's news reports isn't going to lift your spirits.
Some blame the media, as if a cabal of reporters, editors and broadcasters conspire daily to bum out the general public. They forget that without information being distributed a free society cannot exist. News organizations, with all their warts -- as evidenced by recent ethics scandals at USA Today and The New York Times -- stand in for the citizenry to keep watch on government and others.
Sunday before last, the Seattle Times ran a photograph of caskets containing the remains of troops killed in the war being placed on a plane in Kuwait for transport back to the United States, breaking a government ban on such images. On Thursday, a Web site operator -- after filing a freedom of information request -- posted hundreds of photos of flag-draped coffins taken by military photographers at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. Some of the pictures were picked up by news organizations, including the Star-Bulletin.
The Pentagon and the Bush administration insist the prohibition protects the sensitivities of families whose loved ones have died. No one wants to inflict more pain on people who suffer such losses, but the photographs do not show bodies, nor can one casket be distinguished from the next.
The photos are far different from the graphic images of burned and mutilated corpses of civilian contract workers, one from Hawaii, that were widely displayed earlier this month and criticized by the Bush people and others.
News organizations are accustomed to readers and viewers finding fault with coverage. Remarks and observations are part of learning for messengers of information. But the overwhelming factor in putting out that information is the belief that people need to know the reality of war without the cleansing that the government wishes to impose.
The vision of scores of caskets isn't one Karl Rove or George Bush wishes Americans to see. It's not good for the campaign, not good for million-dollar prime-time advertising.
These guys think too little of Americans. They think people don't realize the true cost of this war, that they can shade the truth by hiding the bodies and coffins, by hiding the wounded men and women who return home without limbs and eyesight and hearing.
As dispiriting as the images of this ill-conceived war, they are as authentic as the blood spilled and the lives lost to hubris and presumption. The pictures tell the stories.
See the Columnists section for some past articles.
Cynthia Oi has been on the staff of the Star-Bulletin since 1976. She can be reached at: coi@starbulletin.com.