Each individual attempting to communicate the horror of that genocide attacks the problem in a different way.

Hitchcock’s Holocaust documentary and the Nuremberg trial exhibit/evidence footage were similar to the following Wikipedia entry. They were largely factual and rational.

“The Holocaust

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

  (Redirected from Holocaust)

“Holocaust” and “Shoah” redirect here. For other uses, see Holocaust (disambiguation) and Shoah (disambiguation).

The Holocaust (from the Greek ὁλόκαυστον (holókauston): holos, “completely” and kaustos, “burnt”), also known as haShoah (Hebrew: השואה), Churben (Yiddish: חורבן) is the term generally used to describe the genocide of approximately six million European Jews during World War II, as part of a program of deliberate and systematic state-sponsored extermination planned and executed by Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler.^[1] Some scholars have extended this definition to include the Nazis’ systematic murder of other groups including ethnic Poles, the Romani, Soviet civilians, Soviet prisoners of war, the disabled, homosexual men and political and religious opponents.^[2]

Scholars continue to debate whether the term Holocaust should be applied to all victims of the Nazi mass murder campaign equally, with some suggesting it be applied solely to Jewish victims: ^[3] what the Nazis called the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question.” The total number of victims of Nazi genocidal policies, including Jews, the Poles, the Romani, Soviet POWs, and the handicapped is generally agreed to be between 9 and 11 million.^[4]

The persecution and genocide were accomplished in stages. Legislation to remove the Jews from civil society was enacted years before the outbreak of World War II. Concentration camps were established in which inmates were used as slave labour until they died of exhaustion or disease. Where the Third Reich conquered new territory in eastern Europe, specialized units called Einsatzgruppen murdered Jews and political opponents in mass shootings. Jews and Romani were crammed into ghettos before being transported hundreds of miles by freight train to extermination camps where, if they survived the journey, the majority of them were killed in gas chambers. Every arm of Nazi Germany‘s bureaucracy was involved in the logistics of the mass murder, turning the country into what one Holocaust scholar has called “a genocidal state”.^[5]

“

There are notable inadequacies in this type of language. “Genocide of approximately six million European Jews” does not elicit a visceral response in the reader. It does not characterize or illustrate the reality of The Holocaust. It allows the systematically dehumanized to remain faceless.

Maus tried a different approach. Faced with images and characters, the reader personalizes the story Spiegelman unfolds. His images are moving, and the conflicted dialogue of the characters in the tale makes them deeply affecting. His art style, and the decision to use animals instead of people (Jews are mice, Germans are cats) refreshes the events that have been worn out by Wikipedia and blandly narrated footage.

Night similarly refreshes and characterizes the history of The Holocaust. In Night it is not the six million Jews that are dying, it is Elie’s younger sister, his mother, and his father. The reality of The Holocaust can be better passed down by these human retellings. Technical language fails almost totally.

Which brings me to today. The language surrounding war has become increasingly technical as people become increasingly used to seeing the war on CNN.

“Level of stability”

“Front burner”

“Boots on the ground”

“Troop surge”

“Al Qaeda style attacks”

“Sectarian violence”

“Another 2 million displaced internally”

“Segregated communities”

“Ethnically cleansed and segregated”

There is a tension in this video between the language of the program and the language Michael Ware (the journalist in Baghdad) seems to want to use. He is clearly frustrated by the events and emotions he is trying to convey. Indeed, words like the ones quoted above (all from the conversation) are quite weak, and don’t provide any picture at all of what it’s like to be on the ground. What does “displaced internally” even mean?

Michael Ware is an interesting figure to follow though. That video was him at his most Wikipedia. Here is another video that explains some of what he is like. It creeps closer to revealing the truth of the experience of the war in Iraq.

 Finally, this recent article follows Michael Ware as he tries to cope with what he’s seen and experienced. Read the article, it’s really worth the time. It begins like this:

““I am not the same fucking person,” he tells me. “I am not the same person. I don’t know how to come home.” 

 

It’s October, six months after our first meeting, and Michael Ware, 39, is at his girlfriend’s apartment in New York, trying to tell me why after six years he absolutely must start spending less time in Iraq. He’s crying on the other end of the telephone. 

 

“Will I get any better?” he continues. “I honestly don’t know. I can’t see the — right now, I know no other way to live.”

 

To begin to understand where he’s coming from, Ware wants you to see a movie. He filmed it. It’s just after midnight during the second battle of Fallujah, November 2004. The marine unit he’s hooked up with has cornered six insurgents inside a house, and with no air support available, the only way to take them out is person-to-person. Staff Sergeant David Bellavia doesn’t like the sound of that — odds are one of his men, or he, will die in the pitch-black of an unfamiliar house — but he knows he can’t just let these guys go. So he asks for volunteers to go with him: Three men raise their hands, followed by Ware, who as a reporter (then for Time, now for CNN) is the only one without a gun or night goggles, and still can’t explain why he went along. He just couldn’t not.

 

Ware flips on his video camera and creeps into the house six feet behind Bellavia. His device is picking up nothing but darkness and the slow, creaking sound of footsteps. Then, light, blinding light. Bullets ping around the living room, and before he knows what’s going on, two bodies drop. Bellavia has knocked off the first of them. For the next hour — until all six insurgents are carried out dead from the house — Ware captures that same pattern of blackness and near silence (in the background you can hear the insurgents chanting, “Allahu Akbar,  Allahu Akbar”) pierced by gunfire and screaming.

 

Ware believes he recorded the perfect war experience that night, a snapshot you can get only from terrifying proximity. He dreams of renting out a theater and subjecting an audience to it in full surround sound; that way people would know what it’s really like over there. “It’s my firm belief that we need to constantly jar the sensitivities of the people back home,” he says. “War is a jarring experience. Your kids are living it out, and you’ve inflicted it upon 20-odd million Iraqis. And when your brothers and sons and mates from the football team come home, and they ain’t quite the same, you have an obligation to sit for three and a half minutes and share something of what it’s like to be there.””

 

This final excerpt is real. It isn’t just numbers, it is a humanized, characterized, visceral experience. It is the kind of story that elicits a gut reaction of guilt over the violence done to and around those involved. My question is this: isn’t the media failing to provide a complete picture of the war if it doesn’t provide this kind of emotional coverage; if it doesn’t show the public everything it is passively condoning?

If media coverage had universally been like Michael Ware’s, could The Holocaust have happened?

“They made war look stylish and reasonable, and fun”, which means that war is none of those things.

“Goodness me, the clock has struck-

Alackday, and fuck my luck.”

These two quotes really got me thinking.

Kurt Vonnegut served and saw misery, which is described in any war story all the way back to the description of Camilla’s axe spilling warm brains all over a soldier’s dying face in the Aeneid. So why does he have such an insistent and mad sense of humor? Is it a particular quirk of Vonnegut’s?

I searched around for examples of “strange military news” and found some interesting things.

                BAHRAIN
(March 21, 2009) The Los Angeles-class attack submarine USS Hartford (SSN 768)
pulls into Mina Salman pier in Bahrain where U.S. Navy engineers and inspection
teams will assess and evaluate damage that resulted from a collision with the
amphibious transport dock ship USS New Orleans (LPD 18) in the Strait of Hormuz
March 20. Overall damage to both ships is being evaluated. The incident remains
under investigation. Hartford is deployed to the U.S. 5th fleet area of
responsibility to support maritime security operations. (U.S. Navy photo by
Cmdr. Jane Campbell/Released)

This incident, involving a couple of multi-million dollar submersibles crashing into each other, would be right at home in Slaughterhouse-Five. Let’s continue down the rabbit hole:

            Currently, the lightest
load carried, the "fighting load" for situations where the troops
were sneaking up on the enemy and might be involved in hand-to-hand combat, is
63 pounds. The "approach march load," for when infantry were moving
up to a position where they would shed some weight to achieve their
"fighting load", is 101 pounds. The heaviest load, 132 pounds, was
the emergency approach march load, where troops had to move through terrain too
difficult for vehicles. As in the past, the troops often ignored the rules and
regulations and dumped gear so they could move, or keep moving.

In Afghanistan, the problem is made worse by the high altitudes (up to 5,000 meters) the troops often operate at. The researchers found that in Afghanistan, even though the infantry were in excellent physical shape, troops would sweat nearly 20 ounces of fluid an hour while marching at high altitude in bright sunlight in moderate temperatures. That meant more weight, in water, had to be carried to keep these guys going.

That was from an article titled “Lose weight or Die”. It seems our soldiers are running around a bit like Roland Weary. Also, they’re often not too happy about it. Many soldiers dump gear for extra maneuverability, and cite injuries that could have been avoided if they were more agile and less weighed down. Continuing to my personal favorite:

In Window: "Suicidal Teens Welcome"

I cannot confirm whether this picture is real or not, but its creation is still somewhat shocking. Lastly:

"Female Airman Punished for Threesome
Stars and Stripes | Scott Schonauer | May 24, 2007
SPANGDAHLEM AIR BASE, Germany - A Spangdahlem-based airman was sentenced Monday to four months confinement for her part in a sexual act with two other airmen.

Airman 1st Class Ashley N. Rains pleaded guilty at a court-martial to two indecent acts charges.
She had faced rape and sodomy charges but admitted to the lesser charges as part of a plea deal."

Yup. You read that right.

Each of these bizarre fragments is in some way paralleled in Vonnegut’s novel. The random military collision costing millions is similar to Edgar derby’s shooting: it is unnecessary and meaningless, however costly in the extreme. The troops’ strange raiment is reminiscent of both Roland Weary’s too well equipped marching kit and of the comical getup Billy Pilgrim wears around the internment camps. Also, the notion of troops being in more danger because of their overloaded body armor and equipment is a very Vonnegut irony.  Finally, the story of the airmen and their illicit (and possibly criminal) threesome chalks right up next to “He had a tremendous wang, incidentally. You never know who’ll get one.”

Perhaps the madness of war is much more general than suggested in the more narrowed focus of WWI poets, who only describe one thing at a time, and almost always try and impart a sense of horror. Vonnegut and these stories are as ridiculous as another veteran’s Tom Bombadil and his yellow boots. War isn’t just a mad rush of death, it is mad in all its manifestations. Randomness, subjectivity, loss, and black humor are linked and rotating in a centrifuge. Billy Pilgrim can be “unstuck in time” because one doesn’t need chronology to get the feel of Vonnegut’s portrayal of war as a zeitgeist of the bizarre, violent, sexual, and unnecessary. The strange and outlandish tales Vonnegut inserts into Slaughterhouse-Five are right at home on the battlefield, and indeed that is certainly where Vonnegut draws his inspiration.

Sources:

“Lose Weight or Die”

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htinf/articles/20090324.aspx

“The Tension”

http://thetension.blogspot.com/2009/03/photo-essay-uss-hartford-and-uss-new.html

“Female Airman Punished for Threesome”

http://www.military.com/features/0,15240,136750,00.html

“

Arms and the Boy

Let the boy try along this bayonet-blade
How cold steel is, and keen with hunger of blood;
Blue with all malice, like a madman’s flash;
And thinly drawn with famishing for flesh.Lend him to stroke these blind, blunt bullet-heads
Which long to muzzle in the hearts of lads.
Or give him cartridges of fine zinc teeth,
Sharp with the sharpness of grief and death.

For his teeth seem for laughing round an apple.
There lurk no claws behind his fingers supple;
And God will grow no talons at his heels,
Nor antlers through the thickness of his curls.

-Wilfred Owen

There is a painful juxtaposition; a sad discrepancy between a child and this self applied label by a soldier calling himself Blackfive:

“someone who might be considered an expert at not only capturing and killing these butt-monkeys of radical Islamic love,”

Blackfive is, in this post, lampooning the idea of reading rights to terrorists or to captured enemy combatants. His language is harsh, and full of euphemism.

“I do believe however, should the Joes walking point in places like Bermel or Hilmand or Baghdad be forced to give this warning to these targets, I would suggest we be innovative.  Couple of ideas:

–We could paint the entire DA Form 3881 text on all JDAMs, 155 and 105 shells, and all mortar shells so that they could receive the warning during the fight, so as to allow me to worry about shooting, moving, and communicating more effectively.

–We could engrave an abbreviated Miranda Warning on all bayonets and rounds of small arms ammunition so that after using any of these aforementioned items for their intended purpose, soldiers would have to merely say “Do you understand these rights as I have given them to you?”

I know that being the bigger man is important in this war, and I think Jameel Jaffer from the ACLU explains it best how to be the “Bigger” man.”

In this post “Blackfive” describes other soldiers, who are men with lives they may lose, with the anonymous label “Joes”. “Blackfive” then betrays his own point of view in describing “bayonets and small arms” the way he does. The “intended purpose” he refers to is to kill another person. Is that why weapons are created? It is a soldier’s answer, certainly, that a weapon is created to kill, not to keep peace. 

However, “Blackfive” wasn’t always a soldier. Somewhere, he still isn’t. It takes euphemism and nicknames like 

“dirt bag bomb thrower, IED Merchant, Machine gun toting target that would be forming the text book sight picture in front of my M-4″

to allow the action “Blackfive” brushes off  so lightly.

The truth?

“Blackfive” is actually named Matthew Burden. At some point he was only a boy with a smile and quick but brief emotions. Just like anyone else, soldier or civilian, Arab or American, he was once a child without inherent prejudices or malice. Now he is, somewhere, still a boy. However, the military machine has distanced him from the simple past of childhood, given him a gun, and told him other large children are “targets” without rights. 

There lurked no claws behind his fingers supple

Until the world strapped a set to his hands.

Sources:

Blackfive

http://www.blackfive.net/main/2009/02/transitioning-f.html#more

“TRANSITIONING FROM IGNORANCE TO STUPIDITY….”

February 10, 2009

World War One British Poets

“Arms and the Boy”

Wilfred Owen

p.18 – 19

His words led me to immediate empathy and concern. Is it unavoidable that men who go to war as lovers are lucky to come back as ex-soldiers; with only a shadow of the romanticism that, though it may not be strictest reality, is inspiring, harmonious, and hopeful?

Vera and Roland fight about this very issue in Testament of Youth‘s factual letters from the first World War. 

“I can scarcely believe that you are there,” he wrote, after telling me with obvious pride that he had been made acting adjutant to his battalion,”there in a world of long wards and silent-footed nurses and bitter, clean smells and an appalling whiteness in everything. I wonder if your metamorphosis has been as complete as my own, I feel a barbarian, a wild man of the woods, stiff, narrowed, practical, an incipient martinet perhaps…when one has looked from the mountain-top it is hard to stay contentedly in the valley…You seem rather to me like a character in a book…”

Vera is rightly shocked by this…apathy. The sacrifice of a soldier is great, and always called to attention. The sacrifice of his partner is likewise immense, but hardly mentioned. Vera left slighted and bitter by Roland’s turn. However, this is perhaps all that can be expected from a soldier. Owen describes this condition painstakingly in “Insensibility”

Insensibility

 

I

Happy are men who yet before they are killed

Can let their veins run cold.

Whom no compassion fleers

Or makes their feet

Sore on the alleys cobbled with their brothers.

The front line withers,

But they are troops who fade, not flowers

For poets’ tearful fooling:

Men, gaps for filling:

Losses, who might have fought

Longer; but no one bothers.

 

II

And some cease feeling

Even themselves or for themselves.

Dullness best solves

The tease and doubt of shelling,

And Chance’s strange arithmetic

Comes simpler than the reckoning of their shilling.

They keep no check on armies’ decimation.

 

III

Happy are these who lose imagination:

They have enough to carry with ammunition…

 Is this acceptable? Certainly not to Owen, a staunch critic of the war. More touchingly, this uncaring demeanor is not at all mitigated for Vera because Roland is at war. She writes him the courageous reply that he deserved: one calling him back to passion and care. His response to her recriminations is warm and alive.

“Dearest, I do deserve it, every word of it and every sting of it,” he wrote in a red-hot surge of impetuous remorse. ” ‘ Most estimable, practicable, unexceptional adjutant’…Oh damn! I have been a perfect beast, a conceited, selfish, self-satisfied beast. Just because I can claim to live half my time in a trench (in very slight, temporary and much exaggerated discomfort) and might possibly get hit by something in the process, I have felt myself justified in forgetting everything and everybody except my own Infallible Majesty…and instead of calling it selfishness…I call it ‘a metamorphosis’…”

Todd’s most recent post follows…

Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Currently Listening 10,000 Days By Tool Right in Two see related Iraq, Iraq… Oh Iraq Ahh, Iraq…  I’ve been here almost 2 months now, and seen a LOT of crap… both good and bad.  I’ve learned that the United States smells really good compared to here, and that dogs are not really dogs here either.  They are more like wild animals that take every chance they get to bite you, or chase down your humvee.  If you want to know more Iraq details, you’re gonna have to ask me yourself… because there’s too much to type. And to my girl, I miss you so damn much.  The pictures and videos I have of you help me get through every single day, and every single thing that makes me angry or upset.  And the thought of coming home to you after this ordeal is more than enough to make me drive on every day and come home safe.  I love you with all my heart; thank you for being you, and everything you do to make this deployment easier on me!  MUWAH!

He cares. He intimates similar feelings to the roseate early correspondance of Vera and Roland. He is still shocked, appalled, and in love. It is all over his blog. Todd also has a little bit of Brooke’s bravado:

 I am a SAW gunner… I can accurately lay down heavy suppressive fire with my M249, using 5.56mm NATO rounds. I have the most powerful weapon in the squad, and can be damn lethal.

But what next for Todd? He is being passed through a gauntlet. Will he emerge as ribboned as the despondent voice in Roland’s letter? Will he follow Roland exactly, and not come home at all to Jo, his love? 

This is not a narrative unique to Todd. Every soldier is flash fried in an experience that people at home may not be able to understand. 

I will be watching Todd with interest, care, and any thoughts, hopes, and prayers I can find in me. 

I hope he keeps his passion.

Sources:

The Todd

http://www.xanga.com/the__todd

WWI British Poets

p. 20, “Insensibility”, Wilfred Owen

Testament of Youth

p.216 – 219

Vera Brittain (and Roland Leighton)

The trench spike receives its name from a WWI weapon. It was a close combat knife meant to be used for stabbing into a trench from above. Ideally it was intended to penetrate the skull and kill instantly. Charming, right? It’s durability and intended purpose make it ”the best compact anti-zombie weapon on earth” according to The Zombie Survival Guide By: Max Brooks. (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f3/Model1917_knuckle_duster.jpg/658px-Model1917_knuckle_duster.jpg)

Moving right along, the rss sources I will be using for this blog are listed here:

1. Al Jazeera English – War on Gaza : I chose this because I believe that news agencies in the United States understand the middle east much less effectively than a news agency from the middle east might. I am interested to read and hear plenty of unique perspectives, and Al Jazeera makes perfect sense.
2. Antiwar.com : We’re studying war and peace, why not? Antiwar.com does an excellent job of taking standard headlines and investigating further to provide context. It approaches war with no glorification. An excellent source.
3. BBC NEWS | Special Reports | Conflict with Iraq : The official story from the British press concerning the war in Iraq. It often covers the toll of the war on the British soldiers and families, as well as reporting on tactical changes and shifts. It is sympathetic to British soldiers, often unhappy about Iraq, occasionally critical of Americans, but usually fair. However, it is always a western; mass media perspective.
4. Jules Crittenden : Jules Crittenden, according to Jules Crittenden, ”is a Boston Herald editor and columnist who has reported on politics, crime, science, maritime matters, foreign affairs and conflict in the United States, Asia, the Balkans and the Middle East.” Her posts are thorough, interesting, and informative. 
5. Iraq Veterans Against the War : I wanted at least a few veterans’ perspectives on modern conflict. This website/blog is run by veterans and active servicemen who are against the Iraq war. Fairly self-explanatory.
6. israel gaza – Google News : A google news search concerning the conflict in Gaza. 
7. Salon: War Room : Salon.com’s “War Room” is actually an editorial blog by Alex Koppelman.  It tracks U.S. politics as well as U.S. involvement in conflicts.
8. The Long War Journal : “The Long War Journal is dedicated to providing original and accurate reporting and analysis of the Long War (also known as the Global War on Terror). This is accomplished through its programs of embedded reporters, news and news aggregation, podcasts, and other multimedia formats.”
9. Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) : This website, dedicated to veterans’ affairs, provides insight into how veterans are being treated, what their needs are, and how they feel about being veterans.
10. War in Context : War in Context is, in the words of Christopher Dickey (the middle east editor for newseek) “a tremendously useful site, balanced but provocative, up-to-date and comprehensive.” I have found it to be incredibly intelligent, and also extremely harsh. “Provocative” is certainly an applicable word.
11. You Served – Veteran and Military Blog and Military Podcast   : This military podcast and blog follows veterans and active servicemen, as well as maintaining a section for spouses and families. It provides an excellent holistic portrait of a soldier’s life, not just the combat.            

Other than this, I am a frequent watcher of MSNBC and Fox News, and I will probably be reacting to what they have to say. I also read Reuters news every day.