Yes these are horrible images, shocking images, images you might not want your kids to see. You know what? War is horrible, war is shocking and war is certainly something you don't want your kids to see.
Now I don't have any kids, but if and when I do, I really don't want them to face the prospect of going to war. Yet we are living in a country where the horrors of war are complacently hidden by a newsmedia that insists on treating everyone as if they were kids. Sure CBS ran these images, but no one else in either American newspapers or American TV seems to have the guts to do so. I'm not particularly surprised.
What is surprising in that none of the big blogs are running these. This is supposed to our alternative media, our way to route around the oligarchies of information. Yet the big boys of blogs are behaving just like the real big boys of media. Why? I'm not sure, but I'm guessing it might have something to do with a fear of being offensive by posting these images.
But I have news for them, war is offensive. It should shock you, it should offend you, it should repulse you. And if we shield ourselves and our children from this, we are setting ourselves up for another repeat, another disaster, another offensive war.
I'm posting these images because I'm upset. Mostly by what's contained in those pictures, but also because of how poorly distributed they are. A nation is shielding its eyes from reality, and it's not pretty. This is not how my country should be represented to the world.
So let us look at these pictures. Let us be shocked, let us be horrified. And let us remember and let us move forward to a place where these horrors exist only in history.