Gore

I just read a particularly disgusting chapter from Michael Kelly's Martyrs' Day, an "impressionist" take on the Gulf War. In this chapter, which I read for class, Kelly tours two highways bordering Kuwait and Iraq full of bombed-out military vehicles and Iraqis blown to smithereens. I'll spare you the details, but it makes me wonder about how our newspapers of record give hardly any attention to the ineffably atrocious aspects of the current Iraq war. Is not printing pictures of dead bodies meant to stay patriotic, boost morale, or hide us from the realities of war? Or is it a combination of the three? The subject of many a debate, indeed. This is not to say that I merely enjoy seeing images of death--I just wonder how it affects the reception of the war back home.