Re: Picture that shocked America - Photos of caskets coming home make it out of iraq

Quoting dvanhorn <[email protected]>:

> Olhado wrote:
> > http://www.thestar.com/images/thestar/img/040423_us_coffins_200.jpg
> 
> I've added this image to the list of random images chosen from to display on
> 
> bh.org whenever you load the page.
> 
> If anyone has other noteworthy photos of approximately that size, let me know
> 
> and I'll add them to the list.
> 
> Re: We are the Romans -- I took a class on the fall of the Roman empire in 
> college where we read both dissidents and apologists to the empire; all 
> primary texts.  It's not even funny how true that statement is.  If anything
> 
> though, the Romans were more honest about their oppression, their
> aspirations, 
> and the associated costs.  We can't even bring ourselves to look at a few 
> coffins.  Despite our appetite for violence, we hardly have a stomach for
> it.
> 
> David


I was reading an article in which a government official said that taking
pictures did not show 'respect for the dead.'  This is a recent development, one
undertaken, as many have noted, by George Bush Sr.'s administration in 1991,
perhaps to hide the cost of the Gulf War.  

We have no problem showing the dead bodies of other nations' dead in various
poses of indignity.  Nude, crushed, mutilated. It's us and them. I don't think
we're taught to value the lives of non-Americans.


Coffins bring us one step closer to reality, but it's still, sadly, not real enough.

-x


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