2 June 2010 Obscenely unseen and unheard

2 June 2010 Obscenely unseen and unheard


Artist Tattoos Indelible Iraq Memorial Into His Skin

by Lara Pellegrinelli

June 1, 2010

On Memorial Day, Americans paused to remember the nation's men and women who died in combat. For Iraqi-born visual artist Wafaa Bilal, the effort to remember casualties of war is an ongoing and permanent project — tattooed into his skin.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127348258&sc=fb&cc=fp

More and more this nation ignores, forgets, and simply fails to see its wars’ dead and injured. Our men and women in uniform train, deploy, fight, die, and return with no one but their families aware of their wounds, their broken lives, and their deaths.

In previous wars, newspapers printed weekly casualty reports announcing who was injured, who was missing, and who was dead. This seems to have ended with WWII. In Korea, there were fewer unit deployments. By the time VietNam was full-blown unit deployments were uncommon, soldiers received individual orders, deployed, were assigned in country, and left as their tour of duty was up. Casualty reports were minimized and, of course, much smaller than those of previous wars. Fewer casualties, easier to gloss over the wounded, missing, and dead.

So little attention did our casualties receive beyond the confines of family that we seem even to have forgotten the terms: WIA, MIA, and KIA. We actually have car dealerships selling cars with the letters “KIA” prominently displayed. Ignoring the fact that the product line is a cheap and relatively safety deficient automobile; there is no way I would ever be so unconcerned for our history as to buy and drive such a vehicle. I don’t know what the letters mean in Korea. I don’t care.

Even more overlooked are the casualties inflicted upon non-combatants now. The video game appearance of remote warfare has desensitized our combatants and our civilians beyond concern for the “collateral damage” we cause. While no war is ever free of civilian injuries and death, while war is designed to inflict injuries and death on the opposing forces, no injuries or deaths should ever be regarded lightly. The safety of our troops in time of war is of utmost importance, little to no concern for the enemy’s numbers should be a factor in how we carry out our wars until we have done everything possible to protect our own troops. Peace activists, and anti-war protestors have no place in the planning and execution of a military campaign. They should not be allowed on battlefields, should not be allowed to interfere in a campaign by intrusion into hostilities, and should be treated as the idiots they are if they attempt to block military actions.

The Bush administration did all it could to minimize the awareness of our casualties and to fully ignore the number of enemy combatants and civilians killed. Our wounded were warehoused under shameful conditions until the press began to uncover and publicize their treatment. The dead were treated equally shamefully, brought back secretly with no public awareness of how many and when they were returned.

No one killed in war should become nameless and forgotten. But the use of UV ink to remember them is noteworthy and should somehow become part of every future monument to our war dead. We ask the ultimate sacrifice of them and then choose to hide their sacrifice and memory from the public.