The American Way of Gore - Dead, Buried, Discarded

http://www.counterpunch.com/tristam10242006.html


"On the next floor below are the abdominal and spine cases, head wounds and double amputations. On the right side of the wing are the jaw wounds, gas cases, nose, ear, and neck wounds. On the left the blind and the lung wounds, pelvis wounds, wounds in the joints, wounds in the testicles, wounds in the intestines. Here a man realizes for the first time in how many places a man can get hit."

The passage is from Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front. Paul Bäumer, the hero, also reflects about death: "We have almost grown accustomed to it; war is a cause of death like cancer and tuberculosis, like influenza and dysentery. The deaths are merely more frequent, more varied and terrible."

In the United States, the dead and wounded of the Iraq war haven't been so fortunate as to be grown accustomed to. They've been ignored. Chalked up to an abstraction indistinguishable from the kind of "dead" Americans see on their nightly television shows and in Shwartzenegger movies. "In any given period during prime time viewing hours," the Boston Globe once reported, "there are at least 50 people killed, shot, maimed, or raped across the spectrum of broadcast and cable television channels." The dead and wounded of the Iraq war are barely visible because they can't compete with the numbers in prime time"neither in factual numbers nor in dramatic effect. Prime time's dead are more interesting. They're simple. They usually have no names, make no emotional demands, and they're excellent props for plots that us! e them as means to obvious ends: within forty-eight minutes"if it's an hour-long drama and the ads for vagina l lubricants and other orificial commodities are excluded""justice" has been done, the dead have been avenged, usually by killing those who killed them, and wisecracks have been exchanged all around. The credits, as they roll, are as meaningless as the names on a war memorial. The 11 o'clock news, local as it is, won't even mention the real dead in those real war zones far, far away.

-snip-

The disconnect is a huge benefit to the government, to this government in particular, to whom hiding the dead is official policy, and to this president in particular, who has never showed up at a single soldier's funeral, and who doesn't know the difference between a casualty and a cliché: Brit Hume of the Fox-Bush Network once asked him this question: "When things go badly, as many people would feel they have been in Iraq with the continuing casualties and struggles and difficulties, do you ever doubt?" Bush's reply: "I don't think they're going badly. I mean, obviously I think they're going badly for the soldiers who lost their lives, and I weep for that person and their family. But no, I think we're making good progress. As I said I pray for calmness when the seas are storming, and I"you know, my faith is an integral part of being who I am, and I'm not going to change." Obviously not: The exchange dates back to Septe mber 22, 2003. Notice that Iraqi civilian casualties didn't register with the president's concerns"not then, not now. Asked about the recent estimate placing Iraqi deaths at 650,000 since 2003, Bush's reply was: "600,000, or whatever they guessed at, is just ... it's not credible."

-snip-

But if we care so little about American casualties, we can't very well be expected to care at all about Iraqi casualties. They're means to an end, like those 50 prime-time deaths every night. As President Bush said on January 26, 2005, when he was told of a helicopter crash that claimed the lives of 31 Americans that day: "Obviously, any time we lose lives it's a sad moment And listen, the story today is going to be very discouraging to the American people. I understand that. We value life. And we weep and mourn when soldiers lose their life. And ... but it is the long-term objective that is vital, and that is to spread freedom."

In other words, don't Iraqis dare stand in the way. They've never mattered in this war ... not in 2003, not in 2005, not today. They have only one admissible role. They're décor to the American way of gore, fillers for the new mass graves.
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Bored, I watched a couple hours of TV and was amazed at the unrelenting violence. Gun violence, pistol violence in particular.

I know, must have pistols, second amendment, a proper militia has to have handguns to be well regulated and all...