By Gary Alan Fine, October 12th, 2011 
One of our rhetorical tics, so common and so universal as to be unremarkable, is the shared assertion by liberals and conservatives alike that our soldiers are our heroes. We may disagree about foreign policy, but soldiers are the bravest and the greatest. That mainstream politicians should make this claim – Obama and Bush, McCain and Kerry – should provoke little surprise, but it flourishes as a trope among the anti-war left as well. Political strategies reverberate through time as we refight our last discursive war.
In the heated years of the War in Vietnam there was a palpable anger by opponents of that war that was directed against members of the military who bombed the killing fields of Cambodia, Hanoi, and Hue. While accounts of soldiers being spat upon were more apocryphal than real, used by pro-war forces to attack their opponents. According to sociologist Jerry Lembcke in his book The Spitting Image the story was an urban legend, but it is true that many who opposed the war considered soldiers to be oppressors, or in the extreme, murderers. This was a symbolic battle in which the anti-war forces were routed, and such language was used to delegitimize principled opposition to the war and to separate the young college marchers from the working class soldiers who were doing the bidding of presidents and generals. In the time of a national draft, college students were excused from service, making the class divide evident. (For the record, I admit to cowardice, fearing snipers, fragging, and reveille. I was a chicken dove).
After the war, war critics learned a lesson. No longer would the men with guns be held responsible for the bullets. All blame was to be placed upon government and none on the soldiers, even though the draft had been abolished, and the military became all-volunteer (and the working class and minority population continued to increase in the ranks).
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<p>Read more: <a href=") Our Heroes? Responsibility and War
By Michael Corey, June 7th, 2011 
This is the second post by Michael Corey in a two-part series on the use of the phrase “skin in the game.” The first part was published on June 2. – Jeff
Many in the military fear that “putting their skin in the game” will be forgotten, and some have taken steps to keep memories of their fallen comrades alive. These may be found in an old form of art, the tattoo, specifically the memorial tattoo.
Mary Beth Heffernan, a photographer and associate professor of sculpture and photography at Occidental College, documented U. S. Marine memorial tattoos on film and incorporated them into a gallery exhibit, “The Soldier’s Skin: An Endless Edition.” The exhibit was shown at the Pasadena City College Art Gallery between October 10 and November 17, 2007, which was organized in conjunction with the citywide Pasadena Festival of Art and Ideas. Marines may be a specialized form of soldier, but most Marines prefer to be thought of as Marines rather than soldiers, as referenced in the exhibit’s title. The endless edition refers to Heffernan displaying her photolithographs arranged in stacks on a floor. To me, it brings tombstones to mind. Heffernan encourages viewers to take home copies from the stack, free of charge and reflect on them.
This image of a tattoo on the back of U. S. Marine, Joshua Hall. was photographed by Heffernan on February 3, 2006. It was reproduced as a 24” x 27” poster in unlimited quantity for the show in 2007. Memorialized on dog tags, along with his grandfather and uncle who died in war, are other fallen Marine brothers in arms.
Other Heffernan images may be found on the following links: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-1027-heffernan-pg,0,5619148.photogallery?coll=la-tot-entertainment; and http://www.artscenecal.com/ArticlesFile/Archive/Articles2007/Articles1007/MBHeffernanA.html.
The cover of Heffernan’s exhibit catalog features a young girl holding a 19” x 27” poster showing the tattoo on the front of Owen McNamara’s body, taken on February 6, 2006. During his second tour in Iraq, McNamara was twenty years old. While attending a promotion ceremony, ten of his fellow Marines were killed at a booby-trapped patrol base. The tattoo which covers most of his . . .
Read more: Skin in the Game II, Never Forget
By Michael Corey, December 17th, 2010 
In recent posts, Jeff and Elzbieta have each commented on how revealing back stage moments can destroy understanding and meaningful action. I agree.
However, I also believe revealing the back stage is sometimes crucial for widening understanding and establishing the grounds for critique. An interesting example is the documentary Restrepo, winner of the Grand Jury Prize-Documentary at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, produced, directed and filmed by Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington
From the director:
The war in Afghanistan has become highly politicized, but soldiers rarely take part in that discussion. Our intention was to capture the experience of combat, boredom and fear through the eyes of the soldiers themselves. Their lives were our lives: we did not sit down with their families, we did not interview Afghans, we did not explore geopolitical debates. Soldiers are living and fighting and dying at remote outposts in Afghanistan in conditions that few Americans back home can imagine. Their experiences are important to understand, regardless of one’s political beliefs. Beliefs are a way to avoid looking at reality. This is reality.
Restrepo is the name of a now abandoned U. S. Army outpost located in the six-mile-long Korengal Valley in the eastern province of Kunar, Afghanistan near the Pakistan border. The outpost was known as one of the most dangerous Army postings in the world.
Restrepo portrays the back stage and the front stage. Moments of human frailty, the boredom of a stranded soldier, the pain of a war wound are the back stage truths of military life, normally shielded from view. The well-publicized front stage: awards ceremonies, dedications to fallen soldiers, moments of valor. Understanding both parts of a soldier’s life is crucial to understanding their experience.
The back stage in this documentary (as opposed to the Wikileaks situation) was obtained with the explicit consent of the U. S. government. In fact, few limitations were placed on the project by the US military, and most concerned security and privacy. The filmmakers were sensitive to the way they depicted the wounded and dead–but they still did it. Restrepo is a dual-sided coin.
Anyone who has . . .
Read more: Restrepo: A Constructive Public Airing of Back Stage Moments?
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