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We’re trying to keep the spirits high here, despite the bleak, wintry weather and the dark days, despite the crowded stores and the excessive shopping syndrome that characterizes this month, despite listening to stories about preparations for the inaugural ceremonies (it could have been so different), despite it all, we click on the Net and look to blogs to cheer us up and we come across yours and whammo! Right in our face. Pictures of atrocities that the imagination cannot even begin to comprehend. And then no posting all day. Nothing to pick us up. Thanks a lot!
I can’t help the news that I hear about every waking hour. Ocean is only as happy as the world around it.
So you could not find anything to balance the morning post? No one, including you, is doing anything happy-happy?
I ran around in the bleak wintry weather and dark days to crowded stores where people were excessively shopping. I am in a mad dash to Get It All Done before tomorrow’s departure.
Departure? So where are you going and why?
In this one month I am privileged to be spending time in four cities and two villages that have easily been the most important places in my life. I have work to do, yes, but I also have time to spend with my Polish family and pals, and then with my residing-on-the-East Coast family.
So you wont be blogging much?
Who are you kidding? I have already told my sister (who lives in Warsaw) that I will basically not leave her apartment because I have too much blogging to do and so she may as well not coax me into any other activities.
Seriously, ever since I started blogging in January, I have wanted to post from Poland. I am traveling with my computer and my camera and my tested trusty world Internet access (dial-up, but oh well), so I should be fine. Ocean is crossing the ocean and she and I can’t wait to plunge right into my homeland with vignettes of life as I know it, remember it, miss it. The next 24 hours may be thin on writing as I am on a bus, then in the air, then in the air again, then on a train. But after that, if you are curious about life Over There, tune in.
Departing for a moment from the light-and-airy posts, I want to signal a WashPost article from today discussing the emergent prominence of one part-time blogger. He lives in New York, apparently works for an Internet company and in his spare time, he posts photos of the human cost of war, photos that are deliberately left out of the presentations put forth by official government and news sources. [He has issued a statement saying that he is not intending to make an antiwar statement. He asserts that the American soldiers are also victims. He does feel anger at the American people for supporting the war without a hard look at the costs involved.]
His blog has generated enough attention to be of concern to the US government. In response to the disconcerting images, the US military has taken the time to put together a website with its own slide show, intended to generate support for the military intervention in Iraq.
Still, the authors of the news article interviewed a number of military experts who claimed that the blogger’s site is the more compelling of the two.
"As far as the blog site, this is information operations at its finest," said one Marine officer who has served in Iraq. … An Army soldier who fought in the Sunni Triangle last year and maintains a blog himself agreed. "The winner has to be the blog," he said. "There's something all too visceral about seeing the pictures of the dead and wounded, on both sides, which overwhelms static displays of weaponry" in the military presentation.
Juan Cole, a University of Michigan expert on Iraqi affairs … came to a similar but broader conclusion: "What the two presentations show us is that the U.S. military is full of brave and skilled warriors who can defeat their foes, but is still no good at counterinsurgency operations, and is wretched at winning hearts and minds."
I’ll list the two sites, with a note that the blogger’s site is indeed very graphic. Here’s what the WashPost says about it:
In the version of the Web site that was up last week, the first image on the site showed a malnourished Iraqi baby, wide-eyed and screaming in pain, under the sarcastic headline, "another grateful Iraqi civilian."
Many of the photographs are far more graphic than are usually carried in newspapers, showing headless bodies, bloodied troops, wounded women, and bandaged babies missing limbs. One added recently shows a U.S. soldier with part of his face blown away by a bomb.
The “Soldiers for the Truth” site, supported by the US military can be reached here: http://www.sftt.org
The private blogger’s site can be viewed at: http://www.fallujahinpictures.com
