al fresco
Last week I thought al-Zarqawi was worth a post (
Insurgent Leader Al-Zarqawi Killed in Iraq); however, in a week filled with visits from family (my mother from Phoenix) and happy interruptions at every turn from the niece and nephews there always seemed better things to do. Musab al-Zarqawi: how you are not missed. The thought I had was simple. Mr. al-Zarqawi: monster or maggot? Mr. Zarqawi was not a soldier. He was not a warrior at all. No one addicted to sawing peoples heads off, who are captive and have their hands tied, is a warrior. Such people are psychotic. At best executioners. They are sadists and gouls. Weapons seemed to mystify him, he handled guns like a frightened idiot. He was not a strategist. They (they?) say he was a keen strategist. It served their purpose but I doubt this. He rent apart the insurgent coalition he desired to lead, he seems to have been fingered by some among them who had tired of him. His thirst for blood [^] anyones blood [^] and desire to provoke civil war in a muslim land not his, left many Iraqis quietly glad the US is still on the scene. They say he was an effective fundraiser. This may be true. To some, he exemplified a bitter low chauvanistic hate and collected money from those who desire to live vicariously that hatred. What strategy he possessed lay in the way he walked away from a life of circumscribed petty crime in Jordan to become an internationally known serial killer. But in all fairness that wasn't his strategy as much as an opportune turning of ours. Glancing over my brief notes on post Zarqawi Iraq I see that the new government in Iraq is not pleased with Hamas
Iraq upset Hamas deemed Zarqawi 'martyr' | FP Passport. George F Will, turning his face towards Zarqawi's and leaning after him, in a curious tribute
Iraq's Atomization to a man he accords a "brutal efficiency" a "diabolical genius" despite this he celebrates Zarqawi's failure to ignite a true civil war, waving aside the disorder he only needed. Some will miss Zarqawi. There has been a crackdown on the al qaeda network and a widely publicized series of raids
BBC NEWS | Middle East | Zarqawi death sparks US crackdown amid stories of a weakened enemy
Picture of a weakened Iraqi insurgency | csmonitor.com and an appointing of the next al qaeda leader (unclear by whom) for Iraq
Al-Masri Identified as Zarqawi Successor. The violence continues. In the middle of all this was The Picture. I saw this from the front pages of a couple of newspapers the next day: a square yard color photograph of a bloody dead man's face in a handsome gilt frame lovingly and quickly exhibited and consumed at the revelatory USHQ press conference. This is bizarre, I thought, it's creepy, a touch too sanguine. When I handed my 37 cents over and pushed into the depths of the Washington Post I saw I wasn't the only one to have noticed this Philip Kennicott did as well
A Chilling Portrait, Unsuitably Framed Seeing in the framing an invitation to unconscious iconism, vengeance as principle, the return of savagery where reason once stood.
Simply put it is fetishistic to make a idolistic object of death. To seek an erotic pleasure from the image. and make no mistake that was what was done. It makes the question out of who are we, the viewers consumers of such images? I thought of Susan Sontag's writings on the images of atrocity and brutality. I have her earlier essays, though it was twenty years ago I read them. I was also aware she revisited this topic in
Regarding the Pain of Others - Google Book Search. I am more apt now to regard that even a photograph essentially forms a text, a flow of images symbols subject to interpretation. At least more then when I read On Photography and consumed a great deal of writing on and examples of photography. The monolithic image, the true documented moment, resistant to interpretation. Sontag revisits her previous thoughts: Does a culture of spectatorship diminish the impact the moral force of an image. An image exists but has force, or is drained of it, by how it is used. The Mediatique image. (this is a point Kennicott explicitly makes) Can atrocity, suffereing, exist, as a moral act a moral moment separate from managed consumption. Sontag speaks of the choice of engagement she may as well speak of the choice of narrative, the priviledge of suffering. The seductiveness of war among people who only think they know better.
There was something in the notion of how much insistence is contained within an image to confront what it shows that reminded me of the tolling bell from John Donne's Meditation XVII. A rereading of that proved problematic: "the church is catholic, universal... all mankind is of one author..." While Donne has coached this in terms of the church he knew what he was saying. Everyone of us is from God, of God, beyond what we imagine or understand of our sects or creeds. Beyond the hole of lost empathy which in practice makes men like Zarqawi less than human, yet does not withdraw the form of man stamped on him. Death is a translation; Gods. Not mocked, not mourned not reveled in. Even in desperate relief, with pity, and a deeper understanding if you can read a part of any of it. If we choose to ignore the message of the bell that Zarqawi is taking part of us out of this world, we are diminished. Not looking for why or how deformed. Donne says it is not greed, a "egging after misery" to desire affliction and attendant suffering. It is a humbling sanctifying tribulation, a treasure of worth. Sontag's privileged suffering cannot be disengaged be must be a genuine disturbance to have value. Or it forms no priviledge. Let Zarqawi go to to his judgement with God. Do not mock his miserable death
Zarqawi Did Not Die Instantly, General Says.. He was part of who we are. Certainly He attacked that very notion with murder and malignant snarl. We need the understandings we let go.
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