Featured art: Collateral Murder and the human cost of war
As we lead up to the Bradley Manning Solidarity Weekend for artists and organizers, here are some images from C.T. Brown. These paintings depict the human cost of the Iraq war, a reality that was brought first-hand to the public by the release of the Collateral Murder video – for which Bradley is charged of leaking. These Images speak for themselves, but we have also included some text from the artist. The complete text, along with the images, can be found on his blog.
…On April 6th 2010 Wikileaks published a video of a massacre of civilians which occurred in New Baghdad, Iraq, on July 12th, 2007. Two Reuters photographers were killed and the incident was investigated at the request of Reuters and the military dismissed any irregularities, declaring the killing to have been lawful.
As a painter of images of war, four screenshots stood out for me. The first two involve the civilians walking along innocuously unsuspecting while they are seen in the crosshairs of the helicopter gunner video. Contrary to the Army report, these civilians were not shooting at anyone and they were aware of the helicopter’s presence. The dialogue of the pilots is revealing: they suspected these men of being enemies because they were military aged males.
In the second screenshot, the civilians are simply gunned down in a haze of dust and 30MM helicopter bullets. There was so much violence that even the gunner’s video could not display the true violence of their murders:
The numbers on the screen, the white crosshairs and the telemetry box at the bottom of each frame are depersonalizing. The pilots’ comments are sadistically charged as if the human beings they had just killed were beneath contempt. As a Vietnam era person, I can recall how civilians were mowwed down by helicopters in free fire zone mentality to increase ‘daily body counts’ of supposed enemies.
A black van stops and a Good Samaritan gets out to help a wounded man: The Apache helicopter asks for permission to shoot the van saying that they have come to retrieve the wounded and weapons. “Come on! Let us shoot!” whines the gunner.
There are two children in the van who are wounded when the soldiers shoot everyone down from the helicopter. International Humanitarian Law states that when an enemy is incapacitated, soldiers are not allowed to kill them and are not allowed to kill Good Samaritans who come to assist the wounded.
Iraq had become a free fire zone in 2007 and it is now open season in Afghanistan. The propaganda guys know that they can win the war if they can make it so that you never saw it, you never read about it, no one mentioned it to you, you did not hear about it on TV.
The artist concludes with:
In terms of International Humanitarian Law and the Geneva Convention rulings, there were at least three violations of law in this incident. It is the opinion of Marjorie Cohn, an expert on International Law, that the attack on civilians was the first violation of International law. The second was to kill the wounded and the Good Samaritan, and the third was the desecration of a dead body by running over it with a tank. For more specific information regarding Cohn’s legal opinion, please read her work here: http://www.marjoriecohn.com/2010/09/bradley-manning-american-hero.html
In the face of dehumanizing and brutal events, art can not only show us the truth but also give us a lens with which to view such events outside of “official channels.” Bradley Manning Solidarity Weekend (April 9th and 10th) is a time for us to begin to tip the scales. As artists and organizers we can bring Bradley Manning into public space, and provide a lens for which the public can take a new look at the injustice and hypocrisy of his imprisonment. Without yet being convicted of a crime, Bradley is already serving the sentences of the war criminals he is blamed of exposing, and of our leaders who lied to put us into war — and whose ongoing complicity in these atrocities and attempts to keep them secret make them accomplices.
I’m still awaiting news whether those who committed the actual shooting as well as those who authorized same have been named and/or charged for their crimes. Also, I refuse to be cowed into voting for Obama in ’12 despite the possibilty of electing one of the reactionaries simply because he is a war criminal and deserves prosecution and not re-election!