Bringing Iraq Violence to Your Doorstep

The New York Times reports today that videos taken by Iraqi enemy combatants are surfacing on Google Video and YouTube. The videos range from sniper attacks against US troops to improvised explosive devices going off under military vehicles. They appear to be part of a major propaganda push to help recruit people to the resistance.

In the age of embedded reporters and green zone analysis the videos offer a rare glimpse at the everyday violence on the streets of Iraq. While the video hosting websites are quick to take down clips that they deem offensive--as any video with a soldier bleeding to death generally is--they are also the only real footage of the consequences of combat available to most US citizens. In Vietnam reporters roamed the countryside and captured images of people being burned to death by napalm, soldiers missing limbs being ferried to helicopters and armed assaults against entrenched enemies. The footage played a significant part in mobilizing the anti-war movement and helped bring the conflict to an end.

While the videos were taken with the intent to bolster anti-US opinion (and DVDs of them are widely traded in Baghdad bazaars), they could also help bring the terrors of war to the doorsteps of the American taxpayers and voters who allow the war to continue.

Since the first war in Iraq the American military has successfully managed to portray warfare as a violenceless pursuit. While we are aware of body counts and know that bombs go off around the country, we very rarely glimpse the bloody results of a bullet or explosion. This so-called "clean violence" takes the blood out of death and makes it much more easy for people to continue to support the war. While we often see a camera mounted in the nose of a plane, or missile that tracks the progress of the weapon through the air to the target, the explosion is either a simple black screen or just the smoke you would see from a distance. It has all the salience of a video game and gives the feeling that the mission was accomplished. We don't see the aftermath where people actually suffer in war.

Two years ago I wrote a paper on this subject titled "The Politics of Invulnerability" and presented it at a lecture at the University of Madison-Wisconsin. And what I wrote then is just as valid as it is today.

And while I cannot bring myself to whole-heartedly support the videos that have appeared on YouTube, I think they add a necessary perspective to the conflict that has been silent for too long.