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March 19, 2013

Somodevilla’s Haunting Iraq War Anniversary Photo from Arlington

By Michael Shaw

This is the most visceral photo I saw yesterday, taken on the tenth anniversary of the start of the Iraq War.  Here’s the caption:

Headstones are reflected in a photograph that is leaning against the headstone for Iraq war casualty U.S. Army Master Sgt. Tulsa Tulaga Tuliau on the 10th anniversary of the beginning of the war in Iraq at Arlington National Cemetery March 19, 2013 in Arlington, Virginia. Tuliau was killed when an improvised explosive device detonated near his Humvee during combat operations near Rustimayah, Iraq on September 26, 2005.

If atypical for a wire image, what’s completely fitting for this photo of a photo is that we have no idea who these guys are — or if Tuliau is even in the picture. What Getty’s Chip Somodevilla captures in the most liminal way (no retouching, no funny filters) is that Iraq was a ghost war … and now, ten years down the road, so many of its vets are too.

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  • ksd

    Somodevilla is always excellent at making the still come alive.

  • bks3bks

    Because it’s all about us. How many Iraqi ghosts are waiting in hell for George W. Bush?

    –bks

  • black_dog_barking

    … Iraq was a ghost war …

    In Iraq we sent well provisioned troops out to fight against ghosts, against an enemy without uniforms or a flag. Their mission and our war was to use deadly force to subdue a concept, to strike a deadly blow to terror. And, as this image shows so succinctly, real men died real deaths. (It is worth noting that these are men in this picture, not boys like the draftees of Vietnam era.)

    On the tenth anniversary of the American invasion of Iraq, nine years and ten months after ‘Mission Accomplished’, more than 50 people died in bombings in Baghdad.

  • Cactus

    Color me impressed.
    As one who did a lot of multiple images in B&W, this photo is terrific, both
    artistically and thematically.

    black dog noted that
    these are men, not boys as in Vietnam. That triggered the thought of what is
    more tragic, boys dying before they married and had children, or the older
    reservists who had lives and wives and kids and jobs and houses — all at risk on the whims of the devil’s dilettante. And the deaths continue as the young
    ones returning find the same hopelessness they left when they signed up – no
    jobs no future. Or the older ones finding their wives gone and their house in
    foreclosure. The veteran suicide rate is currently (2010) 22 per day! http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/01/military-suicides-us-veterans_n_2602602.html

    As for the photo,
    combining the color photo of the graveyard with the B&W of the soldiers
    (which looks to be a snapshot) makes the image and the thoughts behind it even
    more dramatic. The men are colorless, ghostly, already fading out of the lives
    of those who knew and loved them. Don’t know if it’s true, but the supposition
    is that they are all dead.

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  • Doc Stukey

    MSG Tuliau is the giant Samoan in the upper right. He was very hard to miss in a crowd and looked bullet proof if anyone could. The anniversary got me thinking of some of the guys I knew who were killed and tripped over this photo. I knew him from Rustamiya and had the privilege of going on a patrol with his group. He was killed with his commander LTC James and SFC Howe on 26 SEP 2005. LTC James, I believe, is immediately left of him. I didn’t know SFC Howe well but I think he is on the far left. They belonged to a task group made up of officers and NCOs advising Public Order Brigades from the Iraqi Ministry of Interior. They went into the Sunni Triangle areas, such as Salman Pak. It was very dangerous and many of them didn’t come home. I have another photo of MSG Tuliau and other photos from Iraq at http://anailinmyhead.blogspot.com/

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