Editor,
When I was walking home from campus on Nov. 14, I wondered why I could not find even one issue of that day's Daily Lobo. An off-campus search turned out to be futile as well. I didn't think about it much then, but the heated debate in more recent issues over the front-page photo of that edition explains this curiosity.
Later, I looked up the Nov. 13 The New York Times that also printed the disputed photo, and others as well. What I found there made me feel sick, disheartened and angry - not over the publication of the images I saw there, but over the evidence of war crimes committed by the so-called liberators of Afghanistan.
I have read about the systematic rape, torture, mutilation and mass killings these forces are known to have committed during their lawless four year reign of terror from 1992 to 1996, until they were driven out by the emerging Taliban forces. The Taliban at the time were celebrated as liberators for putting an end to such atrocities even while establishing their own rigid and oppressive rule.
Now that the United States has carpet bombed the criminal forces of the past to victory in Afghanistan, it should not be a surprise to anyone to see pictures of castration, mutilation and executions of the defenseless become the present of Afghanistan's reality once again. But even while it is no surprise, we should be shocked and not complacent.
If the Pentagon had allowed the public to see the effects of its bombing on the ground of Afghanistan where people live, resistance against the war would have risen to very high levels, making the war politically unfeasible.
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That is why the Pentagon bought up the rights to commercial satellite imagery, so that these images could no longer be shown to the public. The Pentagon's intention to muzzle access to information may very well also be the reason why, after the Taliban had given up Kabul, a missile struck the Kabul office of the Arab Satellite channel Al Jazeera, which had broadcast war pictures to the Arab world.
It is important that people see at least some facets of the real face of this war, even and especially if those pictures offend our sensibilities. They might alter our attitudes towards politicians and what they claim to stand for.
Based on the complaints expressed in the Daily Lobo I suspected that the Daily Lobo published one of the images I saw in The New York Times. My assumption was confirmed when I looked up the Daily Lobo Web site.
There were significant differences between the Daily Lobo "coverage" and that in the New York Times. First, the pictures in the New York Times were not on the front page.
Second, they were accompanied by an article on war crimes committed in the past by Northern Alliance forces, which may, as these pictures indicate, be carried out again not just sporadically, and which will probably remain part of Afghanistan's near future.
Third, the New York Times published a series of three shots.
The first picture shows the Taliban soldier being dragged from the field to a road. He appears to be wounded, but his body is still intact.
In the second picture the soldier is on his knees looking up to his torturers. It is as if he looked right into the face of someone viewing the scene from behind the shoulders of a Northern Alliance soldier.
The viewer of this picture sees an elderly man. His full beard has traces of gray. He is beginning to bald. His eyes are soft and gentle. This is the perspective the cameraman has inadvertently given us outsiders to the war as we look right into the face of this man.
I instantly sensed the pain and dignity of all humanity in this face as it made its silent appeal to compassion and brotherhood.
It is probably this image, the agony of humanity concentrated in the face of one man, that I will carry with me the rest of my life.
The third shot makes it more obvious than anyone would or should care for that the man's appeals were not heeded.
The captive's body is already mutilated as a Northern Alliance soldier shoots him in the chest.
The Daily Lobo should have carried all three pictures, if at all, not just the last one, and then run a commentary next to them.
Anyone would have then seen how and why this was not simply an "execution" as the Daily Lobo suggested.
The call "to get over it (such images)" is monstrous in many ways.
First, it denies the humanity of victims of war crimes whether committed by the United States and its allies or by its enemies.
Second, it intends to silence the humanity of those who revolt against such dehumanization.
Third, it displays a callous insensitivity not just for the plight of people subjected to such atrocities, but, for this very reason, also for the humanity that resides in the person who denounces it in others.
Fourth, the response "Get over it!" to people who are shocked at images of Taliban soldiers being tortured and killed by Northern Alliance soldiers encourages the perpetrators and sympathizers of the Sept. 11 attacks to comment on their crime with the same callous words.
J.L. Oberst
Philosophy instructor
