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TechnoratiThe Language of Dead Bodies
everywhere instead of a name there is a lie...
-- W. S. Merwin
Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars
of light ....
-- Mary Oliver
I've been cutting trees. The woods on the north side of my house is thick with gray trunks of dead fir and spruce. Neither old nor particularly large, these trees have been dead and dying for some time, killed by acid rain or spruce bud worm or something complex and harder to diagnose. Besides being aesthetically unappealing, they are a fire hazard. Some are still standing. Many have blown over making walking in the woods very difficult -- like traversing a giant's game of pick-up-sticks. With my chain saw I topple the standing trees, then cut everything into moveable pieces, and carry and drag the logs and branches back further into the woods, pile them up, building sanctuary for the red squirrels and deer mice, refuge for the winter wren. What's left is an open woods with a few healthy oaks, tamaracks, and maples.
It's hard, sweaty work -- especially for an aging guy like myself. Some of the logs are old and dry, nearly as light as the paper they might have been made into. Others are dense and heavy. But the work is not so hard or all-engaging that I stop ruminating. Yesterday, as I picked up each log, cradled it in my arms against my chest, and marched with it back into the woods, I was thinking about other things that I have embraced like that, or things that I might have. Memory and imagination are often stimulated by such a simple gesture.
I remembered times, returning late at night from trips, when my children had fallen fast asleep in the back of the car, and I carried them, cradled against my chest, into the house and put them to bed, pulling off their sneakers and pulling up the covers. Holding the logs against my chest, I also imagined they were artillery shells, that I was about to slam them into the breach of a cannon whose explosive destination might be homes and schoolyards where children just like mine played. And I imagined that I was in a market in Baghdad in the aftermath of a truck bombing carrying away the broken, burned, dismembered bodies of children. Or, maybe the leg of a man, the arm of a woman. My comfortable, old sweatshirt stained, not with perspiration and sap, but soaked with blood. I thought of the slash piles I was building in the woods as though they were heaps of bodies and body parts in an Iraqi morgue. Here I was, on a beautiful summer day, having the luxury to work in the woods, dripping with grief and anger.
You remember Jonathan Swift's Modest Proposal written in 1729 in which he satirically suggests that the problem of poverty and hunger in Ireland could be eradicated by employing the practical expedient of cannibalism -- breast-fed infants, even of the poor, being plump, tender and nutritious. Swift even offered recipes. I'm not in a satiric mood, though. Particularly in regard to overfed Americans whose overweening appetite for collateral damage is largely abstract, the un-named, uncounted bodies consumed to clear the way for imperialism. And even if Julia Child had written it, I doubt that there would be much of a market for the Collateral Damage Cookbook. Denial tends to deaden the taste buds. Even Oprah couldn't sell it.
I'm thinking instead of a real, political utility for all these civilian bodies, especially the children. However, where they would have the most political advantage is the least practicable. Having Tony Snow lay out the Fed-Exed body of a blasted and still bleeding Iraqi girl on the president's oak desk in the Oval Office every morning is unlikely. Nor is having every senator and congressman's desk similarly graced anything that could be arranged. Visas, even for the dead, are bound to be tied up in red tape. And these responsible parties could hardly be counted on as sponsors.
But, in deadly seriousness, I would suggest to the Iraqis that after each bombing they lay out their dead -- in rows, in jumbled piles -- at the gates of the Green Zone. In my imagination I can see parents carrying the remnants of their children cradled against their chests and depositing them, as is, against those impermeable, medieval-like walls. Children bearing the heads and hands of their parents, neighbors the legs of their friends with the shoes still on, sisters their shrapnel lacerated brothers. Slash piles.
Why suffer in private? William Sloane Coffin exhorted his parishioners to "improve the quality of their suffering," use their suffering to unite with and console others. Why not, when no peaceful or violent appeal to decency, morality, and rationality has any effect, why not use the bodies most contorted by violence for the most un-contorted of moral speech -- Stop!
Let the dead speak.
Let the dead bear witness.
Insist that the hobgoblins of the Green Zone handle the fruits of their labor. Let's see who would dare to come out to clean up this mess. Let the limp dead be battering rams against the implacable lies. Lies are finally no match for reality. And the reality of a sliced open child's head, its brain covered in blood and flies, its one remaining eye still asking why, can be persuasive, perhaps more persuasive than a senator with a non-binding resolution, more persuasive than the measured duplicity of an imperfectly born-again Colin Powell, more persuasive than a Democrat who wants to keep the war going to run against it in 2008.
I appeal to the Iraqis to lay the bodies of children and loved ones out like a moat, a sacred circle, a noose around those walls. What could be more eloquent?
I know full well that such an idea is grotesque. What parents wouldn't want to lay to rest a dead child with dignity, respect, and sanctity even if they can't find all the parts? A little peace, a resting place apart from the obscenity of indiscriminate bombs. A private place to grieve separate from the marketplace of death. Who would want to lay down a mutilated sister at the base of the anonymous and arrogant edifice behind whose walls electricity runs, beer is cold, air conditioners bathe the generals in air as cool as the Rockies, pretty young women jog in red, white, and blue halter tops, pizza has all the toppings, the wages are high, and not a word is ever said anymore about wining hearts and minds. Would I, crazed with anger and grief, abandon my own dead son or daughter at the imperial gates of the Green Zone?
I don't know. There is grotesque and then there is grotesque. And then there is the grotesque that may stop this monstrosity.
I have a mask from the Ngala tribe in the Congo. It's large and dark brown. The woman's features are sketched in with pale white paint. The downcast eyes are weeping white tears down the round cheeks. It's a "Women sue for Peace" mask. When the men have been fighting too long, the women don the masks. I wonder if it ever worked. You might say it's the mask that Cindy Sheehan wore in Crawford. Surely it wouldn't work in Baghdad.
Reverend Coffin said, "Improve the quality of your suffering." Sometimes only an act born from the most outrageous grief and love, an act that tears your own heart, can actually do that --- save the life of a not yet shattered child.
Robert Shetterly lives in Brooksville, Maine
www.americanswhotellthetruth.org
21 Comments so far
Show AllPerhaps sending this essay to all your Senators and Reps would help them to get beyond their absorption in the political implications of this war and start relating to, and dealing with, the human moral ones. No, there is no military solution to the paroxism of violent chaos in Iraq. Nor, we are discovering, is there a political solution. But, there IS a human solution, beginning very simply and immediately with the decision to stop the killing now.
In Europe we get to see all the bloody photos, not censured. Children blown to pieces at checkpoints. Families vaporized by US firepower. US soldiers shredded like Swiss cheese by IEDs. On 911 WE (not you) saw videos and photos "too sensitive" for American viewers. What is it with these "delicate" American viewers that they are spared the REALITY of cheneybushsluts crimes? And I DO MEAN TO INCLUDE 911 in those crimes...
A relative few of the maimed Iraqi children have been brought to the US for medical treatment. I would think that efforts to bring many more (there are tens of thousands) along with publicity and photos might be a constructive way to do a variation of what the author is suggesting.
I could be wrong but I seem to recall some Greek tragedy where the commonfolk were so fed up with a senseless, lengthy war that they cast the bodies of the dead over the walls of the castle to show their disgust with the ruler of their lands, and them as servants or subjects of their city-state or whatever it was. It seems that this horrid act of the people was intended to inform their ruler(s) how poorly they have been treated and blatantly disrespected.
I don't remember the end of the tale however, it was that event that caused the author to write about it. Still read about it in some halls of education in the US of A.
After I read this beautifully written article it came to me that most of the war profiteers now in power would not only not tear up upon reading it-they would probably ridicule it with-"what a wuss this guy in Maine is!'
The language of Emmett Till's mutilated body was heard around the world when his mother insisted that his casket be opened. I thought of this when my nephew Chase came home from Iraq in a transfer tube, his head completely wrapped in gauze because his face was blown off. I even suggested to my brother, Chase's father, that he allow Chase's head to be shown without the gauze to shock people into seeing the truth of war. He agreed with my position and still does but he just ouldn't do this. In fact, he couldn't look at his son's body. After the funeral, some of Chase's friends said, "What a cool funeral." Yes, the Marines know how to throw a funeral.
Each of us needs to look at this war, stare at it without looking away, acknowledging the horror that is being conducted in our names, against our own military, their families, and against the people of Iraq.
I have always said that the best way to end war and murder would be to force everyone to clean up their own mess.
To lay a body bag on the White House steps every morning-even if moron saw it it wouldn't faze him.Bush/Cheney have no feelings for anyone unless they are rich and crooks.
namvet67:
Well put. And so sadly true.
Veterans are the closest thing to those dead bodies, so if you want those dead bodies to speak, you know who to ask. Dustoff has it right but his combat chauvinism is a bit strong. It's also understandable. Combat veterans experience the one part of war that no image can convey. They are eyewitnesses to the true horror of war. Something that planners of wars should certainly know. The average American is blessed, and also cursed, in that they have never had to experience a war first-hand. War to most Americans is something on TV that can be switched off when it gets to difficult to stomach. Fewer and fewer Americans actually have a direct connection to the war or even someone in the war. In fact Americans are not encouraged by their government to support the war effort in any way beyond yellow ribbons and bumper stickers. In WW2 America people rationed food and other essentials, pulled their drapes closed at night, bought war bonds, worked in the shipyards and other factories to support the war effort, we even got weekly war updates in our movie theaters. And, guys were also drafted. The government wanted and needed the support of the American people to prosecute the war. But since WW2 all our wars have been political so the government doesn't really want the people to know the realities of its foreign policy. Because they know the American public wouldn't agree. The result is that today our disinfected image of war is proving to be a curse. A country that doesn't know what its military is doing, in their own name, is heading for disaster. Proof that America doesn't know what its military is doing is that they are shocked to learn that we do torture, we do kill civilians, we do sometimes supply the bad guys, we do try to cover up atrocities. We do these things because that's what happens when you go to war. These are the things that the combat veteran sees and knows. America doesn't even see that its military and veteran services are being privatized and outsourced. With private contractors in Iraq about equaling the number of soldiers, it's pretty clear what's up. In the future it's easy to see 100% private contractors. That means no government liability. It also means a mercenary military that has its first allegiance not to the country but to a corporation.
Hoa binh
Sure, photographs of the dead would spark more of a response in not only the world, but in the USA. However, the Bush adminst. will not allow reporters to take pictures at will. And the coffins of our soldiers are not allowed to be viewed or photographed. Americans for the most part remember Vietmam and the tv and news. But the Congress and Executive branch keep the TRUTH hidden, Americans are faced with watered down news, and are kept in the dark by Bush and Chancey's secrecy. It's the young generation who are in the dark and those are the innocents who join the military. We are really living in the dark ages now.
Dustoff,
I suspect we're on the same page, and I share your view that it's human beings that are at stake, regardless of whether they are civilians or military personnel.
What I was trying to suggest was that the photojournalism from Vietnam speeded the exit (from VN) by educating the public and also the politicians; not that it had any direct bearing on subsequent military actions. (Although it probably did to a certain extent, in terms of documented military history and future strategy.) In any case, my point is just that the US media would serve the public best, by telling it and showing it, the way it is. That would be productive.
To go back to your previous point (slightly out of context), about what a half-million troop draft has got to do with it. I would argue, in fact, that's about the figure needed if one were to use the strategy of the British Army in Northern Ireland (a not dissimilar military situation), to effectively protect civilians and minimise casualties to something acceptable in the western world. This strategy was advocated by some senior US Generals, as I recall. But now, with the deterioration into civil war, that figure's likely doubled to something impossibly large.
Anyway, I wish you well. Must go...
You would have to walk the streets of Baghdad in the early morning picking up tourtured corpses of common people who did nothing more than support the U.S. backed government.
Our leaders with blood on their hand is analogous to us buying meat in a package. Send them over to clean the streets for a month in Baghdad!
Thomas,
In no case was I taking a military position, and let me remind you that bodybags (or litters for the living )make no distinction between civilians and military, and neither did most of the medics I knew. Human beings were at stake.
Veterans are aware more than any civilian watching the news of the innocent civilian casualties endemic to modern warfare. Period.
And if the Time magazine photojournalism from VN was so effective, why didn't it keep us from invading Iraq? Could it be that Americans in general just wanted the whole VN episode to go away - to forget about it? (No better way to ruin a party than to mention VN.) I gaurantee you the vets haven't forgotten. So make the Best and the Brightest in the Green Zone "deal with the mess". They may remember that before starting the next war.
Dustoff,
You implied in your first post that photographic evidence is somehow of little importance in comparison to the first hand military experience.
In response, I pointed out in my second post that, on the contrary, photographic evidence combined with honest journalism can be very important, in informing the voting public as to the true nature of events.
That's one of the striking differences between then and now. Or rather the indifference of the US mass media in honestly reporting such events on the ground. Basically, being reluctant to venture far outside the security and comfort of the Baghdad Green Zone.
I agree with Robert Shetterly's article too. The civilian loss of life is tragic. However, you sound like you are taking a military position in referring to body bags, where in fact, innocent Iraqi civilian casualties far outweigh coalition military casualties, as I'm sure you are aware.
It is our repulsion when faced with things dead, our sterile society that doesn't even acknowledge that the meat we slap on our grill was once a living, breathing being, that makes us close our eyes and minds to the deaths of our fellow men and women. Mr. Shetterly's article is touching and eloquent. Too bad feelings and compassion are so out of style these days that the deaths of "others" is of no significance to us.
Who said anything about the draft?
And what on earth do War and Common Sense have to do with each other.
I agree with Mr. Shetterly - lay a bodybag on the White House porch every morning full of something they can see, feel, hear, smell, and touch. I'd like to see if that would "...sully their beautiful minds..."
Dustoff,
Sure, you could draft another half million troops to Iraq to share a similar gut experience.
I say it's better to look at the photographs, and use some common sense. That's what photographs are good for.
It was the honest photojournalism in Time magazine during the later years of Vietnam, that opened people's eyes. That's the type of photojournalism that's required now. Not CNN/Fox type propaganda.
I can never forget the face of this scum of a creature, obedient servant to his white masters, making a fool of himself, standing in front of the world in the UN, spouting lies about WMD. He thought the world would fall for his bald-faced lies, believing his audience to be as stupid as the editors of the American mainstream media who later applauded his nonsense as a masterful presentation. This liar was none other than Colin Powell whose cowardice has prevented him todate to open his mouth and let the truth out. As part of the war Mafia, he is equally responsible for the war crimes.
40 years ago, when I was 18, I was sent to VN as a medic. I can still Feel the intestines of eviscerated guys slide through my fingers, still Taste the oxygenated blood gurgling up from their lungs into my mouth, still Hear the moans and screams from the pain and fear, and still Smell the burned flesh, the rotting corpses and even the body odor of troops left out in the jungle far too long.
Photographs my ass.
That's what photographs are good for:
http://www.marchforjustice.com/shock&awe.php