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President Obama’s declaration that we will remove all combat troops from Iraq by the end of 2010 is something of a moment for celebration (if leaving a country that we occupied and brought to its knees under false pretenses and is now caught in the throes of sectarian violence can be seen as a moment of joy), but the pleasure of that announcement has to be mitigated a good deal by the fact that he has also committed an additional 17,000 troops to the war in Afghanistan (on top of the 32,000 troops already there). Al Qaeda is ensconced in the caves and hills of the Afghanistan mountains and the Taliban does arguably pose a national security threat to the U.S., so this may be justified at some level, though whether it is a winnable war or not—or what a victory here would actually look like—are certainly open question (just ask the leaders of the former Soviet Union … if you can find any of them). But what is troubling is the way in which we seem to have convinced ourselves that the reason we having been fighting this war, at least in part, has been to save the women of Afghanistan.

To be sure, I have no doubt that the women of Afghanistan are treated in ways that are horribly inhumane and cannot possibly be justified in any way by appeals to cultural differences or long standing traditions. But there is a continuing and nagging cultural meme that presumes to justify U.S. military presence in Afghanistan as somehow connected to securing the human right of these women. It’s not part of the official rationale for our being there as far as I know, though I do recall Laura Bush making such a public appeal a few years back, but the concept nevertheless seems to float along within the public discourse in a network of vaguely connected narratives and cultural associations that functions as a sort of moral imperative for our presence there; and here’s the point: it does this in a way that distracts attention from the larger public debate we should be having about our national interests and concerns in this part of the world and how we should go about accomplishing them.

The presence of this meme was given visual prominence this past week on the front page of the NYT as part of a story (and a website slide show) dedicated to the idea that talk of women’s rights in Afghanistan is starting to take hold and with the clear implication that it is a direct effect of the U.S. defeat of the Taliban in 2001. The photograph is of a seventeen year old woman by the name of Mariam, who had been forced to marry a forty-one year old blind man at the age of eleven and was then beaten and otherwise abused because she failed to conceive. She eventually fled and found refuge in a woman’s shelter

The narrative is full of pathos, and one would have to be cold hearted not to be deeply affected by it, but what distinguishes it from numerous other such stories one can find on the internet is the image that anchors the report, a photograph that bears distinct resemblance to the photograph of the now famous “Afghan Girl” that graced the cover of National Geographic in 1985 and again in 2002, and has been a persistent sign of U.S. concern for the plight of women and war refugees caused by the Soviet aggression. And so instead of focusing attention on the fact that we will increase our military presence in Afghanistan to nearly 60,000 troops, we are encouraged to a state of self-satisfaction in the knowledge that we have somehow done better than the evil empire that preceded us in a war that seems never to end.

But there is more. For one week earlier the NYT reported on the plight of Iraq’s war widows. According to the United Nations 10 percent of all Iraqi women aged 15 to 80 are widowed—740,000 in all—and without the resources to sustain themselves, often forced to resort to begging, prostitution, or “temporary marriages” required to procure even a modicum of state support. Many if not most of these women were widowed by sectarian violence unleashed by the U.S. invaston and at least some—there is no way of knowing exactly how many—have lost their families to American gunfire and missile attacks, such as Nacham Jaleel Kadim, age 23, pictured below who lost both her twin sisters and her husband.

If we are truly concerned about the plight of women in the Islamic world perhaps we should start here.

Photo Credit: Lynsey Addano and Johan Spanner for the New York Times

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There may not be a reflective cue in every photograph, but some photos make up for that by reminding the spectator of how vision can be mechanized.

This photo goes in two directions at once, for the striking effect is created by combining modern technology (complete with plastics and calibration) and the colonial visual convention of the dark-hued peasant. The man can be seen as “native” and “primitive,” which makes the goggle-eyed apparatus seem even stranger than it might otherwise. The caption tells us that he is having his vision tested at an eyecare clinic in Mumbai, and so the narrative of modernization can draw down the initial shock of seeing a cyborg staring back at the camera. He isn’t seeing through us; no, he is being lifted up out of darkness.

And it that makes you feel better, you might want to take a look at this:

You are looking at another cyborg, one who is part of a system of surveillance that is projected back across his face. The half mask looks like something out of Star Wars. The military bearing makes him seem ready to be used without hesitation by the System that is mapping and monitoring the nation state. He looks proud of his role–and ready to launch the death ray on command. Some viewers might see this guy as One of Us, but few would want to be so intimately defined by technology.

In fact, this photograph of Captain Bob Edwards on duty at the North American Aerospace Defense Command in Colorado was taken after a US Airways jet landed in the Hudson River on Jan. 15. Amazingly, a 911 call in Queens could be linked to the Center, which probably provided help during the rescue. As with the first photo, the sinister aura that would be picked up by some viewers depends on the mind of the believer. Though likely to be relatively conservative in the first case and liberal in the second, the anxious viewer would be mistaken with each image.

Once that initial reaction is set aside, the opportunity arises to think about how we see mechanically. Sight in the first case, surveillance in the second: both are essential for collective life. (Yes, surveillance is a social good: read Jane Jacobs on urban design.) Modern engineering has provided immensely valuable technologies for improving both sight and surveillance. Both can be used abusively–from prying into private life to creating panopticonic work places–but they remain pervasive features of modern life that we usually take for granted. The question arises, what would we see if we looked at our cyborg selves without fear of what we might find?

Photographs by Arko Datta/Reuters and Kevin Moloney/The New York Times.

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One thing that nearly everyone on the political spectrum seems to agree about is that the U.S. immigration bureaucracy is an incredible mess.  Of course, there is no consensus on what the problems are, let alone the solutions, but there truly doesn’t seem to be anyone who thinks that the status quo is acceptable.  I suppose that’s a start, but if we are going to make any real progress we need to come to some agreement over key terms, and there, of course, is the rub, for at the heart of the issue of  immigration policy is a disagreement over terms: is the problem a matter of  “undocumented immigrants” or “illegal aliens”?

I was led to think about this problem this past week when I came across a photo-essay in the Chicago Tribune on “Flight Repatriate,” one of a fleet of Boeing 737s contracted by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to “expedite the removal” of  “illegal immigrants” to their “homeland,” often in Central or South America, but also Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.  Since October 2007 ICE Air has transported more than 367,000 immigrants to their countries of origin (a 77% increase in the number of deportations since 2006), the vast majority of whom have lived peaceful and law abiding lives within the US borders, notwithstanding their designation as “illegal.”  Animated by a desire for “cost effectiveness and safety,” Air ICE flights include “sandwiches, cheese and crackers, fruit, bottled water, civilian clothing, checked baggage and a private nurse.” As one ICE official put it, “there is no reason why we can’t treat them with as much respect as is possible.” Indeed, “nonviolent” passengers can even have their shackles and handcuffs removed on international flights.  It is hard to imagine how anyone could complain.  And yet …

From the moment of its origins the U.S. has been a land of immigrants, and across the broad expanse of that history the vast majority of those immigrants—starting with the pilgrims and moving forward—have been “undocumented.”  The development of the modern nation-state changed all of that, of course, but not even a bureaucratic sensibility can mitigate the irony of castigating “undocumented immigrants” as “illegal aliens.”  The doubled shift in terms is much to the point, as the absence of documentation becomes not just a sign of exclusivity, i.e., non-citizenship, but of criminality, just as one’s status as an immigrant becomes a sign of alterity that warrants a stigmatizing alienation further marked by the presumed need for armed guards, caged busses, and shackles and handcuffs.

Some undocumented immigrants might be criminals (rather like, say, some Wall Street bankers and financiers can be criminals) or even dangerous individuals, but it is somewhat churlish to designate and treat them as such simply because they lack the proper documentation—or at least one might imagine that a democratic society would adopt a more liberal and humane attitude towards such persons. 

But then again, perhaps one can’t be too careful.  After all, in the right hands even a three inch heel can be a deadly, dangerous weapon. 

Photo Credits: Alex Garcia/Chicago Tribune

 

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Credit: Chicago 2016

The “Sight Gag” is our weekly nod to the ironic and carnivalesque in a vibrant democratic public culture. We typically will not comment beyond offering an identifying label, leaving the images to “speak” for themselves as much as possible. Of course, we invite you to comment … and to send us images that you think capture the carnival of contemporary democratic public culture.

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Close your eyes, think Big Three auto companies, and open them again:

Just about perfect, isn’t it? An out-of-date vehicle with crappy decor designed to distract you from substandard engineering has been wrecked by a head-on collision. And what do we see now that the barrier between the car and the outside world has caved in? Utter darkness.

Even if you stagger away from the wreck, head-on collisions are particularly awful because you know you should have seen it coming. Although the crash explodes in an instant, it was developing well before: when people weren’t paying attention, when merely adequate brakes were installed, or barely adequate regulations enacted. The long aftermath of an accident is the other side of a long winding of the spring beforehand. Emily Dickinson said it best:

Ruin is formal — Devil’s work
Consecutive and slow —
Fail in an instant, no man did
Slipping — is Crash’s law.

The Big Three didn’t collide with market reality overnight. They had been warned and warned, but they looked the other way, as did a lot of other people. The result is broken glass, broken dreams, and a dark future.

The photograph is by Nicolai Howalt, from his series Car Crash Studies. I found the series at Amy Stein’s blog on photography. The poem is an excerpt from “Crumbling is not an instant’s Act.”

Cross posted at BAGnewsNotes.

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