Looking War In The Face

Paul Waldman

May 30, 2005

Paul Waldman is a senior fellow with  Media Matters for America and a senior contributor to The Gadflyer.

One year ago, the ABC program "Nightline" decided that it would read the names and show the faces of all the American service members who had given their lives fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. Some conservatives objected to the program, titled “The Fallen,” in the apparent belief that “supporting the troops” does not extend to acknowledging those who have died. The Sinclair Broadcasting Group, a conservative network of local television stations that includes a number of ABC affiliates, refused to air the program. Bush administration contractor Armstrong Williams wrote, “The ‘Nightline’ episode is little more than a crass attempt to cash in during May sweeps and stoke antiwar sentiment.” Fox News conducted a counterstrike, airing a list of the accomplishments of the war and occupation.

This Memorial Day, ABC will update the program, reading the names of the more than 900 Americans who have died in the past year. This time Sinclair has shifted course and agreed to air the program, though it has denied that their change of heart had anything to do with the wave of bad publicity they received a year ago. There is no word on Fox’s response, beyond their daily cheerleading on Iraq. As of yet, we have not heard any conservatives calling for a ban on Memorial Day itself—but, given that the holiday honors those who have died in America’s wars, it does seem suspiciously like an anti-war plot.

This comes on the heels of a study conducted by the Los Angeles Times  that showed that in major American newspapers and magazines, images of war dead have been almost entirely absent. Though more than 500 Americans were killed in the period they analyzed, the bodies were invisible in the news pages.

Though we are addressing anew the issue of whether those who are killed in a foreign war should be shown and named, the news media’s reluctance to do so is hardly a recent development. As studies conducted by University of Pennsylvania scholar Jessica Fishman have shown, the bodies of foreigners who have met violent ends have for decades been much more likely to be shown in American newspapers than the bodies of Americans. Acts of violence themselves, Fishman has found, are the pictorial province of foreigners as well.

A study conducted at George Washington University of 1,000 hours of coverage of “major combat operations” in Iraq in 2003 showed that on none of the television networks was one likely to see casualties; the least likely to show them was, unsurprisingly, Fox News. (During the Afghanistan war, Fox anchor Brit Hume was asked about showing civilian casualties. “We know we’re at war,” he replied. “The fact that some people are dying, is that really news? And is it news to be treated in a semi-straight-faced way? I think not.”) 

Overall, the least-likely shot to appear was one in which a face could be seen, whether of an American or an Iraqi. One of the researchers, Assistant Professor Sean Aday, later wrote, “Television transformed a war with hundreds of coalition and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilian and military casualties into something closer to a defense contractor’s training video: a lot of action, but no consequences, as if shells simply disappeared into the air and an invisible enemy magically ceased to exist.”

It is here where the controversy over “The Fallen” and the question of pictures of American dead come together: faces and names mark casualties as individuals; human beings each with a singular identity. To hear the media tell it, it is when we can see a face that we should turn away. When early in the war, Iraqi television showed, and some international networks reran, video of dead American soldiers, the reaction in the American media was more fierce than that to any other image of the war. MSNBC anchor John Siegenthaler said, “They are horrifying pictures, and we are not showing them on MSNBC.” Fox News reporter Greg Palkot said, “They are utterly, utterly gruesome.” David Westin, the president of ABC News said, “I didn’t see the showing of actual bodies as necessary or newsworthy.” But in fact, the video contained little gore. What it did contain was the soldiers’ faces.

Needless to say, the Bush administration would be happy if Americans did not consider the human cost of the war. In this, they are continuing to operate on the twin lessons of Vietnam and Operation Desert Storm, each supposedly proving that if the public sees too many images of dead Americans, support for a war will quickly dissipate, while a clean war seen only from a distance will be greeted with grateful parades.

Actual evidence for this proposition is thin—it is just as likely that the casualties themselves, and not whether the bodies appear in a photograph, are what really affect public perceptions of the war. But from the perspective of the news media it should be utterly irrelevant whether photos will influence public opinion or not. Conservatives have implied that the pictures of prisoners being tortured at Abu Ghraib are worse than the torture itself, reports of desecration of the Koran are worse than the desecration itself, and reading the names of dead American service members is worse than the fact that they have died. But any reporters or editors who make decisions to include or exclude a photo or a name based on its possible political effects have betrayed their highest obligation: to the truth. Could images of the dead or a reading of their names lead some to question the war’s wisdom? Perhaps. But every report about the war influences how we think about it.

We are in the midst of an ongoing struggle to determine the content of our future memory, how we will understand Iraq in the years and decades to come. Will we remember the toppling of Saddam’s statue and purple fingers raised in pride? Or will it be a row of coffins and a lengthy list of dead soldiers, a burning car and bodies strewn on a Baghdad street?

Each war leaves behind its iconic images, the one or two visuals that remain when memories fade and details are lost. These are chosen collectively because they encapsulate what has occurred and communicate how the events are to be remembered. The raising of the flag at Iwo Jima, for instance, tells a story of heroic effort, sacrifice and, ultimately, American triumph. The 1972 photo of 9-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc running naked down the street after her village was napalmed shows the chaos and civilian suffering of the Vietnam War. The lasting image of Operation Desert Storm is a missile’s-eye-view of a building about to be destroyed, a victimless testament to American technological prowess and might.

As the Bush administration desperately tries to convince us that though the Iraq War has been “hard work” in the end everything will turn out splendidly, we should remember that in the rest of the world, this war’s iconic images do not symbolize liberation and hope. The rest of the world will remember the Iraq War through the photo of 12-year-old Ali Ismail Abbas, who lost both of his parents and both of his arms when an American missile destroyed his house, lying in a dingy Baghdad hospital room. They will remember that hooded figure attached to wires and standing on a box. The images they remember tell of arrogant power and innocent victims.

Here in America, our memory of the Iraq War will not be so uncomplicated. But on Memorial Day, we should take the time to note that the Iraq deaths are not merely a number (though that number now exceeds 1,650). Each one was a human being, sent thousands of miles from their homes and lives and loved ones to fight and die. More than half were under the age of 25.

Although its design was controversial at first, when the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington was unveiled Americans were overwhelmed by its emotional power. Instead of depicting an act of heroism, the Memorial shows the names of all those who served and died. It transformed the genre; memorials to war and tragedy now almost inevitably include the names of those who were killed. We now acknowledge that wars are not abstract, that when our leaders send the armed forces into battle—for reasons noble or nefarious—real Americans will die. If we want to honor their service, we need the courage to look them in the face and hear their names.