War comes calling
Again.
from 
JoeUser Forums
JoeUser Forums
I, as I'm sure a good proportion of the American public are, have become somewhat unaffected by all the images of war and conflict pouring out of Iraq these days. We're exposed to it on a daily basis; it's easy to become immune to photos of blood, battle and gore. Every newspaper and news channel shows so much of it, so many scenes of death and destruction that I tend to just not take much notice anymore.
Until this morning. I logged into MSNBC and was confronted with an image that made me hitch in my breath and stop what I was going to do. It was another reminder of the human face of this conflict, one that I had convieniently managed to compartmentalize after the bombing of Balad where I thought that I had lost friends and colleagues.
This photo is relatively simple, but very powerful nonetheless. It's a kevlar helmet. Bloodied and torn, laying on a road. You can see it for yourself:
Link
Why does this bother me so much? Because I've seen my husband's head in one of those. I've worn one of those, I've held one, I've had one sitting in my house on my husband's dresser. I've seen those things in regular use around my 'hometown'; the base that I live on. As a matter of fact, there's an exercise going on this week and everyone's walking around in chemical gear wearing gas masks and kevlar helmets. It's a common thing, pretty much everyone who's active duty has one regardless of their job title or rank. We all make jokes about 'turtle shells' on people's heads; my kids have all gone up and rapped their knuckles on my husband's helmet and agreed that it's harder and heavier than it looked.
That's why I found it to powerful...because it's something I can relate to seeing daily. All too often the pictures coming out of Iraq are alien to us; they're of a foreign land that most of have never been too. What we know about the terrain, the country, the culture is just what we've learnt in school or have been told by the media. It's easy to remove ourselves from it because it IS so far away.
This hit pretty close to home for me. Again.
Until this morning. I logged into MSNBC and was confronted with an image that made me hitch in my breath and stop what I was going to do. It was another reminder of the human face of this conflict, one that I had convieniently managed to compartmentalize after the bombing of Balad where I thought that I had lost friends and colleagues.
This photo is relatively simple, but very powerful nonetheless. It's a kevlar helmet. Bloodied and torn, laying on a road. You can see it for yourself:
Link
Why does this bother me so much? Because I've seen my husband's head in one of those. I've worn one of those, I've held one, I've had one sitting in my house on my husband's dresser. I've seen those things in regular use around my 'hometown'; the base that I live on. As a matter of fact, there's an exercise going on this week and everyone's walking around in chemical gear wearing gas masks and kevlar helmets. It's a common thing, pretty much everyone who's active duty has one regardless of their job title or rank. We all make jokes about 'turtle shells' on people's heads; my kids have all gone up and rapped their knuckles on my husband's helmet and agreed that it's harder and heavier than it looked.
That's why I found it to powerful...because it's something I can relate to seeing daily. All too often the pictures coming out of Iraq are alien to us; they're of a foreign land that most of have never been too. What we know about the terrain, the country, the culture is just what we've learnt in school or have been told by the media. It's easy to remove ourselves from it because it IS so far away.
This hit pretty close to home for me. Again.
