XXXXXXXXX -- Iraq War Porn

The following site exhibits something very disturbing about the relationship between war and sexuality. The anger and despair experienced by soldiers as they kill or witness the destruction of other humans has a dehumanizing effect.

There's a normal human defense mechanism to make something positive of what one fears and is repelled by. The soldiers who take these pcitures and then publish them may be acting from several motives: 1) glorification of war and gore 2) shoving the obscene that they see into the face of those who don't know 3) unveiling the secret horror that is war or 4) the utter dehumanization of the enemy as an object of degradation and materiality.

To quote Simone Weil, in her great essay on Homer's Iliad:

'From the power to change a human being into a thing by making him die there comes another power, in its way more momentous, that of making a still living human being into a thing. He is living, he has a soul; he is nonetheless a thing.'

'As pitilessly as force annihilates, equally without pity it intoxicates those who possess or believe they possess it. In reality, no one possesses it'

I find these images and the fact that soldiers might feel motivated to take them and display them disturbing for the fact that it turns other humans into what can only be called "objects" of ridicule and sexual degradation.

It reminds me of a scene from a film called _the Dogs of War_, with Chris Walken. In one scene, after he has killed several enemy soldiers (he plays a mercenary), he breaks into a room where a woman is. The way the scene is set up is onviously meant to arouse the sexual tension in his ferociousness and his utter power over this woman. The possibility of simply raping this woman in the ferocity of his anger and brutality appears in all its rawness and viciousness. Here sex becomes not simply the act of procreative urge which it ostnetisbly is but becomes instead a dehumanizing degrading act perpetrated by a man in power and imposing his will on another human being.

You could extend this to show the close relationship between sex and violence. That is, socialization takes the "edge off" of the violent nature of sexuality itself. War brings out that close relationhsip, stripping away the veil.

Yet, even granting this, I think there is room for "outrage and indignation" at what the web site portrays. While it may unmask the betiality that forms one pole of human nature, it also outrages the other pole, the potential for acting and being other than our merely bestial selves.

WARNING: The site offers very disturbing pictures of war mixed with sexually explicit pictures.
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Porn site offers soldiers free access in exchange for photos of dead Iraqis

The site's owner says images of nude female soldiers in Iraq and gory photos of dead insurgents provide an unedited version of the war - while the military investigates.

By Mark Glaser
Posted: 2005-09-20

Warning: This story contains links to unsettling images and sites where people glorify violence and pornography -- and document the hell of war. If only life came with such warnings.

The Internet has proven to be a vast resource of information and knowledge, but it only takes one hyperlink to get from the profound to the profane. When reading an Egyptian blog a few weeks ago, I stumbled onto a bulletin board site called NowThats****edUp.com (NTFU), which started out as a place for people to trade amateur pornography of wives and girlfriends.

According to the site's owner, Chris Wilson, who lives in Lakeland, Fla., but hosts the site out of Amsterdam, the site was launched in August 2004 and soon became popular with soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. When female soldiers started to appear in the nude on the site, the Pentagon blocked access to the site from military computers in the field, according to the New York Post.

But the story gets more twisted. Wilson said that soldiers were having trouble using their credit cards in Iraq to access the paid pornographic content on the site, so he offered them free access if they could show that they were actually soldiers. As proof, some sent in G-rated photos of traffic signs in Baghdad or of a day in the life of a soldier abroad. Others sent in what appear to be Iraqi civilians and insurgents who were killed by suicide bombs or soldiers' fire.

Now there's an entire forum on the site titled "Pictures from Iraq and Afghanistan - Gory," where these bloody photos show body parts, exploded heads and guts falling out of people. Along with the photos is a running commentary of people celebrating the kills, cracking jokes and arguing over what kind of weaponry was used to kill them. But the moderators will also step in when the talk gets too heated, and sometimes a more serious discussion about the Iraq war and its aims will break out. . . . . . . .

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