Strong Images, Crazy Week

Nick Berg, Iraqi Prison Photos, and this crazy week

Throughout this week there seems to have been an onslaught of strong images. In my life, I have always had what other people consider a strange fascination with strong images. I am the type at work who is considered strange sometimes because I want to see it all. This first turned up in me when I got cable TV in the early 80's. I was drawn to the most bizarre, strong, and scariest movies. I was a big fan of Steven King, and his Carrie, The Shining and Cujo movies. I became a fan of every low budget slasher flick of the 80's. Later, I would become a fan of extreme forms of music, like speed metal, gangsta rap, and punk rock. In the 80's rap was mild, the "ol school". But, later on, it became more grittier, cuss words, stories of Uzis and all.

I think that my generation, the cable TV generation was the first that was brought up on strong images. I think largely it made me numb to it, even leading to my fascination with them. There was the explosion of the space shuttle which happened in like 1986. I remember after that happened, when we came back into school the next day, one of my classmates had a sick joke he told the whole class.

In this week, there was the release of the Nick Berg video. I wanted to watch it. I have a slow, inadequate computer, so the download was hard. I finally got through, and I saw part of it. All I can say is that I felt pretty disgusted. Its disgusting that the internet was used to showcase the murder of this individual. However, my only dilemma is how can I react to this, but then not react to some of the other strong images that I have seen. I know that I will be accussed of being "anti-American" or what have you, but I remember seeing images of a father holding his dead daughter in Iraq after a bombing and I wonder, how many of my fellow American's are outraged by that?

Then there are these orgy pics that only the Senate has been allowed to see, but the rest of us are not allowed to see. On TV, this Republican said that the rest of the pics he doesn't want to see because they would expose the soldiers to harm. I guess by the nature of the report I read about the pics, I would have to say that though I do want to see them, and I feel we have a right to see them, I am disgusted equally at the idea that this war was not taken seriously enough, that it was just a big free for all. The fact that this Lynndie England chick is pregnant is just the tip of the iceberg. What were these soldiers thinking? This was free for all or something?

I've read a lot of responses, heard from politicians and pundits, talked to my co-workers, and have found that largely nobody is seeing the bigger pictures, everybody is taking sides, and its all about "us" vs. "them." I know that the people who wacked Nick Berg are terrorists, so now the only thing Im supposed to write is "lets just nuke Mecca, Syria, Iran" and send all those "raghead camel jokeys" straight to hell." Im suppossed to look at pictures of Arabs crying with their dead and bloody children with indifference and Im supposed to be angry at the pics of Nick Berg to the point where it goes beyond just wacking the terrorists that did it. I as an American am supposed to just want to kill every Arab and Muslim, nuke Iraq, Mecca, and every other country, and Im supposed to just blindly say "USA all the way"! I guess I could do that, but that wouldn't make me feel any better.

The U.S. government wants to keep the pictures to themselves because they dont want the American public to see how badly they are botching things over there. It has nothing to do with the safety of American soldiers.
The only place the pictures will be censored is in the U.S. I think the soldiers in the U.S. are already safe.
The pictures are already around the world, The soldiers are already in danger, censoring the pictures is only to keep the U.S. government safe.