The single image I find most unfair–unjust, unnatural, immoral–is that of a parent mourning his or her child. And photographs like this are what most make me doubt my own opinion that we should withdraw from Iraq. Even if it’s ultimately for the better, I don’t kid myself that there won’t be a temporary upswing in this kind of violence. Or that it won’t blow up behind us.
Of course, sending in our military to prevent these things from happening doesn’t ever work out neatly: war never works out so neatly. Elie Wiesel said that to be indifferent to evil is worse than to choose the side of evil; the Talmud says that to save one human life is as if one has saved all of human life. The former may well be true, and the latter informs Judaism’s–and my own–sense of the all-important sanctity of individual life. But there’s a way in which neither are actually applicable without failing in some way–without the risk of either moral numbness or moral calculus.
It is, maybe, a part of what Lee meant when he said, “It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it.” It makes me think of the story of the binding of Isaac–I have no commentary on it, merely the image, and that of Leonard Cohen’s suppliant humanity: “All your children here / In their rags of light / In our rags of light / All dressed to kill.”
Regardless of the sadness such thoughts and pictures may provoke, they do hold an essential place in our considerations of how to proceed with Iraq, Afghanistan, Darfur, the Congo, and all the other conflicts and horrors we find ourselves faced with. I don’t think we can ever truly know until after the fact whether we make the right decision–if even then–but I don’t think we can make a decision in the right way without including the horrible truths alongside the ones that make no claims on a good night’s sleep.
Filed under: war
Why do you even doubt that WE SHOULD STAY.
Yes, we broke, but we are fixing it, and we’re not done. Andrew Sullivan is the worst source of information you could find, but at least you came to the right conclusion.
In determining whether leaving Iraq is a good idea, a picture makes you doubt your judgment? Not arguments, facts, ideas, analysis but a picture? That’s how you weigh the pros and cons of a situation?
Moreover, I find the sentiment incredibly peculiar. How exactly can a picture be “unjust, unnatural, immoral”? The only sense I can make of that statement is you are referring to visual rhetoric. In other words, you are arguing that using the emotional appeal of this picture to advocate for withdrawal from Iraq is morally offensive. While I don’t share your distaste I can understand that point of view. These kinds of emotional appeals short-circuit rational debate and crassly use the grief of a parent to further one’s politcal agenda without regard to the merits of the issue.
What I don’t understand is allowing this picture to short-circut your rational faculties and contemplate taking a position counter to what this picture is advocating. In other words, their non-rational arguments don’t justify yours. This picture has no bearing on the merits of withdrawal, therefore it should not impact your opinion on withdrawal one way or the other–assuming you are approaching this issue rationally of course.
JL,
Thanks for posting the link to the picture; I’ve been terrible about keeping up with most blogs, and haven’t, perhaps for the better, read Andrew lately. However, as I’ve come to say frequently, as terrible as Andrew is when he’s wrong, when he hits the right — if even gut-wrenching — note, he hits it perfectly.
If you have the time, take a quick look at this post of mine (Not that I’m trying to take advantage of subbing here at UE for shameless self-promotion or anything!)
http://nathancontramundi.wordpress.com/2008/09/08/a-jarring-dos-of-reality-or-end-this-senseless-war/
I occasionally have doubts about withdrawing; in my case, though, the image — well, the real-life sighting — affirmed my belief of the merits of withdrawing. I wonder about the moral costs of pulling out. Ron Paul suggests that, even if the initial reaction will be more violence, Iraq will improve much more rapidly without our presence.
http://nathancontramundi.wordpress.com/2008/10/18/the-ron-paul-interview/ (Toward the end).
Whether he’s right or not, I can’t say.
Joseph: First, maybe I was vague, but I wasn’t arguing against using that picture to advocate for leaving. If anything, I think we ought to expose ourselves to them (the risk there being that we not expose ourselves to the point of numbness).
But when we’re talking about war, the human costs of war–and of any decision made with regard to war–need to be taken into account. And I’d argue that there is an aspect of those human costs that must be processed emotionally because it can only be processed emotionally. While we shouldn’t be ruled by emotions, we are emotional beings; ignoring that and totally giving ourselves over to the opposite is dangerous as well. Of course the PICTURE has no merits on withdrawal, but what it conveys–the horrors of violent civil strife; death of innocents; sheer human grief–do.
Nathan’s piece on meeting the vets provides an emotional argument to bring the troops home; Dr. Paul essentially offered a counter-argument to my concerns. I think Paul is more likely to be right, but what worries me is the chance he may be wrong, in which case we would have sacrificed Iraqi lives to save American lives; I suppose even then there is a strong case it would have been the proper decision to make as an American. But that still wouldn’t absolve us of human moral culpability, because if all lives are equally precious, there is still responsibility for destruction of that most precious thing. (This, I suppose, is partially why war must operate with something of its own moral calculus.) It only works out easily if you stop yourself from thinking that these are all people we’re talking about, and not numbers or chess pieces.
So when I look at that particular picture–which is an image not just of an innocent war death, but of a death/grief that, even not in war, I find particular “unfair”–I see a fragment of the cost if we are wrong. I don’t think it’s enough that I should change my mind; I do think it should give us all pause, because we need to be fully aware of the human repurcussions of our actions in Iraq, no matter what they are. I guess what this post was, was me talking my way through that pause.
Now this is very odd: “A suicide car bomb exploded at a police checkpoint in Iraq’s volatile Diyala province today…” They just don’t make suicide car bombs like they used to. (What a strange use of the passive voice. That’s our Andy.)
Fred,
My grammarian side has to point out: that’s not passive voice, it’s just past tense.
But on this subject, to go even this far with the grammar is in bad taste, so I’ll stop now.
-wrb