Why We Investigate

*sigh*

It’s ironic that the author of a piece on photography could be so incredibly blind

Again and again throughout this war, amateur photographs have exposed the flaws of the military’s carefully constructed image of discipline. Photographs made Abu Ghraib a symbol of shame throughout the world. And photographs and video images are again undermining the military’s cherished reputation for calm under fire and heroic self-restraint.

I’m not sure what the author is implying here. It certainly seems that he is saying that what the photos at Abu Ghraib showed was actually the rule for our soldiers and not the exception, that the military’s image of discipline is a “carefully constructed” facade – a flawed lie.

I honestly don’t understand this argument. Endicott apparently wants us to believe that some sort of magic happens when a soldier enters basic training. Once they put on a uniform, they are no longer human begins, susceptible to the same flawed sinful impulses as the rest of us, but suddenly are transformed into beings incapable of
actions that aren’t heroic and perfectly disciplined.

We all know better. We know that, no matter how rigorous the training, human beings will never be perfect and will occasionally be fiendish. We are not naive.

The most horrifying images are not published or shown on TV, though they’re easy to find on the Web. But the ones we are confronted with are bad enough: A small child, a victim of a devastating and controversial U.S. airstrike in Ishaqi, is dressed in baby-blue, his eyes are closed, and his tiny, gently clenched hand rests by his side. He might be asleep, except that the photograph, which ran in Newsweek, shows a mangled, bloody arm next to him. The unidentified, shredded limb (does it belong to yet another child?) reaching into the center of the image might well stand for all the rest of these photographs that prick the conscience: They seem to come from the margins of our attention, they reach in and put their bloody imprint on a war that we wish had more innocence and calm to it.

Who wishes for this, Mr. Endicott? No one with any intelligence. What the rest of us, who are capable of rational thought on this matter, wish for is a war that is prosecuted vigorously and ends speedily with a decisive victory for our side. We wish for a war that crushes the enemy completely and that brings our soldiers home with the best possible speed.

Thoise who wish for “innocence” and “calm” in a war have no idea whatsoever what a war actually is. Mr. Endicott, this isn’t a game of tag we’re talking about here. We’re talking about a venture where people die, including some people who, in a perfect and just world, should not have died. We’re talking about a world where the innocent die because of actions that are not only necessary but even noble and heroic. We mourn the innocent dead, but we do not turn them into fetishes. We do not allow their deaths to cloud our reason.

Well, most of us don’t, anyhow.

The military has concluded that there was no U.S. wrongdoing in the March 15 Ishaqi attack that left the child dead.

He says this what what I imagine is some sort of sadness. I am sure that Endicott’s world would be a more sane place if someone could be held culpable for every innocent death. Note that I did not say “responsible” because that’s not what’s at issue here. I do not doubt that the soldiers who killed that child will live with that moment every day of his life. They bear that responsibility in every thing they do.

What Endicott wants, as you’ll see as you read on, is a world where every innocent death caused by our military is met, not with a thorough investigation, but summary punishment. He wants a world where a photo of a dead body is all the evidence that is needed to pillory a US soldier.

What Endicott wants more than that, though, is a world where not only the summary judgement happens but that is happens while the emotions roiled by the photographs are still hot.

Photographs are immediate. Investigations are by necessity methodical and often slow. These two different senses of time — the immediate and the methodical — are now in troubling conflict. A dead child cries out for immediate response; the military investigates. We see photographs of men doubled over with grief, tear-stained faces, mouths contorted in pain, and the pang is instant; the military investigates. A boy standing next to the bodies of his family or friends looks up at his elders with a blank stare on his face, an image that puts death and childhood in excruciating proximity; the military investigates.

Why are the two in troubling conflict? What on Earth is troubling about the fact that we do not let our passions rule our actions? Who could be troubled because we prefer reasoned and informed action to flying off the handle?

Yes, the military investigates. I am sorry that Mr. Endicott does not approve, but I am sure that should be ever be accused of a crime, he will come to appreciate that our society has rightly chosen to act based on fact and reason instead of immediate passion.

See, if our nation acted on immediate passion, several nations would have been reduced to barren wastelands on September 12, 2001 and few, if any, would have seen fit to try to dissuade us.

Investigations are meant to create closure. But photographs, which can circulate forever, keep death and destruction open. Investigations are also meant to assure us that the war waged in our name is being fought with some measure of precision and dignity, but as photographs (and incidents) accumulate, and as investigations linger and overlap one another, they begin to lose their moral force. Investigation, a word meant to reassure us that the government is always “looking into” itself, is itself now subject to the blur that makes the nightly news coverage of Iraq seem like a tape loop.

No. No, no, no, no, NO, NO, NO!!

Mr. Endicott, this is not about you. The military does not exist to give you some sort of psychic warm bath into which you can soak your troubled mind. Investigations are not meant to create closure. Investigations are meant to discover the facts of an incident, to determine if a wrong was committed and who committed those wrongs, and to punish them for those wrongs. That’s it. That’s all.

Investigations do not right cosmic injustices. If you want that, you’re going to have to get religion, wait for the Judgement Day, and hope that the God you picked is one that recognizes the same crimes you do.

Ditto for investigations with “moral force”. If you truly want the military investigations to carry moral force, as you seem to lament the diminishing of that force, then give them the moral force you wish they’d provide. Instead of writing this paean to rash reactions to tragedy, write about the moral force that investigations do provide and why that moral force is absolutely imperative to maintain in the face of disturbing photographs from the war.

Then perhaps you could jaunt over to Cassandra’s place and tell her why only the few disturbing photographs merit your attention while significantly less tragic photographs from the same war seem to escape your notice entirely. Is it because they do not fire up your emotions, perhaps. You’re going to have to tell her, and the rest of us.

And the only image that fades, as the war grinds on, is the one with which we prepared for battle: the fantasy, so beloved of Americans, of a clean, surgical, decent war.

As I said before, no rational American holds that fantasy. We know what war is. We know what it entails. It is true that we are spoiled by our own amazing success. It’s also true that some of us who have chosen to forget history might believe that war is no more dangerous than a backyard game of Cowboys and Indians.

That doesn’t make it so. Endicott ends as he begins, in delusion.

CORRECTION: The reporter’s name is Philip Endicott, not Endicott. I apologize for the error.

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Category: Fighting the Islamists, Oh, THAT liberal media., Our Foreign Policy