Censorship is a prevasive issue in all aspects of our lives. In a recent connection to the struggles in Iraq the publication of the photograph of Lance Cpl Joshua Bernard as he was
“tended to by fellow U.S. Marines on Aug. 14 after being hit by a rocket-propelled grenade during a firefight against the Taliban in the village of Dahaneh in the Helmand Province of Afghanistan” (Iraq Today).
This photograph represents the reality of war. All of the heroics have been omitted and the gruesome frailty of life is what comes through.
Many people have objected to the publication of this photograph. It has mostly been in context to how the image has effected the family LCpl Bernard. I think that also on the broadest scale people fear images like these because it brings a violence ,that they are separated from through euphemistic terms and political rhetoric, into their homes.
The blog “Afghan Quest” reacts to the publication of LCpl’s photograph by saying
“The AP never really cared if the response was negative. This means that the approval of the family would have added some value to the AP’s angle on this; but they were so willing to go without approval that they were willing to disregard a direct request from the Secretary of Defense, who asked them not to publish it.”
It is obvious to see why so many people have objected to the public’s ability to view this immensely personal moment in the life of LCpl Bernard. However, by keeping images like this from the public the idealized view of war is kept in tact.
The contrast of the two tactics has been perpetuated throughout every major War the United States has been in. An example of this are the varying type of poets from World War I. Some of related the importance of fighting for one’s country and the honor which lies in that. Rupert Brooke writes “If I should die, think only this of me:/ That there’s some corner of a foreign field/ that is forever England.” (Brooke, The Soldier). His glorification of going into battle is directly contrasted by the realistic and gruesome images portrayed by Wilfred Owen. He conveys to his audience the horrors of war through lines like “Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,/ Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge” in his poem “Dulce et Decorum Est”. In their time frame these poems served as the only way the public back home had any notion of what war was like. The verbal images are not nearly as shocking to people living currently because we are accustomed to the visual presence of violence in our lives.
The conflict that I see here is whether the censorship of such as images as LCpl Bernard or the words of Owen do us more harm than good as a society in general. As human beings are we better off aware of the horrors of war?
