The Horrors of War

I debated and debated on whether to post this link here or not, and I've finally decided that it is important for this to get out. A friend passed the link along to me, with the warning that the pictures posted at this site are extremely graphic and disturbing. I took a look at just a couple of them, and they are stomach-turningly horrific, much more gruesome than anything that we've seen from Abu Ghraib or in the general media coverage of Iraq and Afghanistan.

The site is a bulletin board that many military members have used in the past to post nudie pictures of their wives and girlfriends. Personally, I find that a little bit lowbrow (amusing though it may be), but whatever; I have no real problem with pictures of naked women. However, it has now become a site where images from the two wars are posted, and the photos are chilling. What is just as chilling, if not more so, is the attitude of the folks who post there, all swagger and chest-thumping bravado at the killing of other people. This is what war does to our sons and daughters; it dehumanizes them, it makes them capable of taking pictures like these and of being proud to have posted them for the world to see. Would you want to spend much time with a fellow who proudly posts pictures of what he terms "barbecued hajis"? How will these people impact society if and when they return from combat?

I have to wonder how even the most rabid 101st Fighting Keyboarder would react when confronted with images like the ones posted there. Or how the war supporters in DC would feel upon viewing them, not to mention your average American out there in the heartland. Surely some of them might rethink their support for the travesty in Iraq if they were to view the horrors exposed in these photographs. If that's not the case, then we certainly have lost the moral high ground and nearly all sense of humanity, and we don't deserve the status or the responsibility of being the world's most powerful nation.