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 upper torso has inscribed, “In Memory of Our Fallen Brothers,” positioned above a helmet carrying his unit’s identification, sitting on top of a rifle with its bayonet stuck into the ground dated, “Dec. 1, 2005,” flanked by two dog tags bearing “Never” “Forget.” Empty boots are arranged at the base with five shell casings on either side with the last names of his fallen brothers floating above each of the casings. McNamara was wounded on his first tour in Iraq, and he has a tattoo on his arm to capture this memory.

Even though Heffernan focused on the particular, the images tell us much more about war and the current need of Marines to honor the fallen and preserve their memories in a society that prefers to ignore their sacrifices. For some Marines, Heffernan notes, tattoos are rites of passage and much more. Marines are aware of their mortality and some design tattoos in advance that their friends will have inscribed if they are killed.

Heffernan offers some other thoughts on the Marine memorial tattoos. She sees them as a type of ritual wounding. Pain, healing, and inscription are seen as part of the memorial. It allows for a type of communion with fallen brothers through their own suffering, during the creation of the tattoo. Sometimes the pain goes on for hours. As the body heals and the expression is made, Heffernan notes, the trauma associated with them hardens and closes. Summing up, Heffernan states,

Most of all, the memorial is an attempt to assign stable meaning to an event that is beyond representation: death that is random, violent, disorienting, unfathomably gruesome. The active duty marine who memorializes his brother’s death shimmers in an uneasy present between the threat of his own death and his buddy’s past life. By scripting his mourning onto the surface of his body, the marine permanently flags his own trauma and loss; the soldier’s skin becomes a site of mourning the past and warning the future.

Heffernan has been interested in skin as the site that separates the self from the other, and nature from culture. She spent three months in 2006 researching the project in tattoo parlors located in Twentynine Palms, a small town in southeastern California, near a Marine base. Some of the Marines she witnessed have served multiple tours in combat.

Why do many Marines feel the need to memorialize their fallen comrades on their skin? The answer to this question may be found in the essence of the phrase, “skin in the game,” and in a desire to not have these “skins” forgotten. In a sense, the skin of these Marines allows for the preservation of personal, interpersonal and collective memories. The skins capture life and death, the memories of them, and they tell a political story for those who are inclined not to forget.

What would a world look like if an Empire – an unnamed, teetering superpower – could fly to war without cost and no loss of life to its soldiers or the civilians of its target? We may soon find out. Finally we discover the true meaning of a “war game.”

Our waltz through the North African skies provides the test. After a week of bombing of Libyan military targets, apparently not a single American or NATO soldier has been killed. And, despite the pathetic attempts of the Tripoli regime to demonstrate otherwise, there seems not to have been many (or any) civilian casualties. Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it’s off to war we go.

Add to this happy scenario the pressure to fund the battles not by taxing the burghers of Calais or the burgers of LA, but the suggestion that our military strikes be funded through the frozen assets of the Libyan regime. While President Obama denies that the money will be touched, honey pots are hard to resist. So just so long as we forget the families of Libyan soldiers, it’s all good. We feel noble about saving lives without costing ours. Bombers have the wings of a dove.

It is true that there is no endgame in sight, and it may be, as has been reported, that Al Qaeda militants are working with the rebels and, who knows, the oil ports may close, but everything is now a training mission. And, perhaps, as we roll the dice, the outcome will be sevens, not craps. Endgames are for Dr. Kissinger, not for Dr. Pangloss.

The charm of brutal dictators (think Mubarak, think Duvalier, think Saddam, think Charles Taylor) is that they have ravaged the wealth of their nation, secreting it away where we can get it. Their greed can fund our moral display.

Perhaps the mission in Libya, despite a wartime death toll that would make the citizens of Sendai weep with envy, may yet be judged unsatisfactory. Libya tomorrow might be anarchic, and, yes, the oil spigot might be turned off, but perhaps a new Libya state will be an Easter present for the West.

But I worry as much about success as about failure. Should the Libya adventure be judged a success, and let us be happy in our military imaginaries, what is next? What will be the lesson of Libya. President Obama has just instructed Laurent Gbagbo, the disputed leader of the Ivory Coast, that he must step down. And then there are the Congo and Korea, Belarus and Burma. Some think that Castro’s regime will need only to be jostled to topple.

We can establish our role as the world’s policeman on its dime. There is something appealing about this desire to spread Western values globally. A world absent Qaddafi is a world in which human rights have advanced, if only by a tiny step.

Still I can’t help but be concerned about this plan for the global future. Dangers lurk in Pax Obama. I reject the extreme claim that suggests that there are no standards for human rights. Nor do I believe that every nation deserves the leaders they have. And we should embrace a foreign policy that includes morality as one factor in determining our global commitments. However, I worry about the day that the most powerful actors in the international political system become persuaded that human rights abuses in other lands become the sine qua non for foreign intervention, separate from national defensive interests. This is a world in which weak armies are piñatas for those who are strong, a world in which a community of nations can go wilding. In such a world the justification for the nation state as an entity where the people can determine their own autonomous future is threatened.

When wars are without charge the world becomes a place in which sovereignty is provisional, preserved at the pleasure of global powers. To be sure modern history reveals that sovereignty was always provisional, but there was always a price to intervention. Without that, why should there be limits? Why not Darfur? Why not Guinea?

What are the unintended consequences of such a system? The states that are protected from Pax Obama are those that can exert a cost on attacking nations. But how can weak militaries do so? In the new world order, governments that can develop weapons of mass destruction that can be used against their mighty opponents will have a shield. North Korea is protected by their nuclear program. But not every state has the infrastructure to build atomic tonnage. Biological and chemical weapons are cheaper and more transportable. Suitcase anti-diplomacy. What is startling is that the Libyans have not – yet – fought back against those who are raining bombs. They are playing rope-a-dope. But what is to stop a chemical weapon in a subway or a biological weapon at a sports event? The great powers may think that they set the rules for warfare, rules that benefit them; their targets may have other ideas.

Are we prepared for these new rules of war? If not, the West may discover that the lessons of Libya are not those that have appeared in current military texts. Global hubris, while understandable, often has a heavy price.

We already have interesting confirmation of the hypothesis in the many posts and discussions in our first months of operation.  A discussion that developed in response to my post on the Afghan women’s soccer team, I think was particularly illuminating.

I started with an examination of an instance of the politics of small things. This opened a discussion of the big issues on the question of war and peace, and to my mind the discussion came to a strong insightful ending with a reply that used the perspective of everyday life to address the big issues under discussion.

There were notes on all sides of the issue, from Michael who critically but sympathetically reflected on the American position, to Alias who denounced the NATO effort in no uncertain terms, and opinions in between, including mine. But Mariam Yasin, offered another perspective completely. That of a person against all wars and as someone whose position in the conflict provides a unique perspective:

“There are too many stories of family and my family’s acquaintances killed by Americans, Soviets, and Taliban. This is not to mention the dispersal of Afghans; Afghans just want to be left alone. My family’s house was not shelled by Taliban, but by the Americans and coalition forces. Fortunately no one was hurt that time.”

She made telling observations in her two replies:

“Though I would have to agree that women have regained new means of re-entering social and political life in Afghanistan, I believe there is too much ignored by the strong focus on women and women’s rights…

The struggles faced by Afghan men are ignored and effaced because, as we know, Afghan men are terrorists. However, their mere “inclusion” in society and presence in public life is also a matter of life and death. Those without beards, for instance, risk imprisonment or even immediate execution. Men and boys brave all sorts of dangers to work for whatever meager wages they can manage.

Why don’t we actually speak more about the Bible verses marked on the sides of American weapons or on the targeting sights? Why don’t we speak of the American boys handed guns with the knowledge that they will most likely be shooting people? What does such an act do to American society? Why does the government offer the poor and disenfranchised a chance at an education only if they go to war? Are there those who believe that Afghan children, who have grown up and are growing up through nearly four decades of war, will forget the invasion, occupation, and death?”

The discussion proceeded with an agreement that the policy choices presented a real dilemma.  Mariam agreed.  But she underscored her fundamental position based on her many observations of significant details.

“The only way “out” that I see is a withdrawal of all external intervention in Afghan (Central Asian and Arab) affairs–this includes the so-called Taliban…

For Afghanistan to recover, there needs to be a political and military withdrawal of American and coalition forces. The destruction of the Taliban–politically and culturally–will take place, I have no doubt….”

An interesting perspective, she presents.  Concerned about women’s rights but noting how Afghan men have been demonized.  Very much against the Taliban, but with a strong conviction that they as a foreign import would have been rejected by Afghan’s without outside assistance.  It seems too good to be true, from an American strategic and tactical point of view.  Win the war, by withdrawing.  But as someone who is not able to say as Mariam confidently does, that I am against all wars, my intuition as a pragmatic pacifist, tells me that she might just be right.  There is little evidence that the military option of “the war on terrorism” has been a success or is likely to lead to such success.  The knowledge and the insights of a critical involved person paying close attention to the details of the Afghan experience, such as Mariam, warrants careful deliberate consideration.

A review of our policy on Afghanistan is due this month.  As I have already indicated, I think this is a war that is bound to fail if the current logic of engagement does not include a planned withdrawal.  The longer American and NATO troops stay there in large numbers with great visibility, I think, the stronger the support for those who fight against occupation.   But a rapid and complete disengagement will lead to a battle between the Taliban and the highly ineffective and corrupt government of Hamid Karzai, in which the victor is not known but the victims are the Afghan people.

It is truly a dilemma.

In the face of the dilemma, I think it is important to pay close attention to the facts on the ground.  Last week, in The New York Times there is a report on an instance of what I mean by “the politics of small things,” a report on a national women’s soccer team.

They play under great restrictions.  Their fathers, brothers and uncles frequently disapprove of their activities.  They actually have to practice on a NATO helicopter landing field, because outside the military zone, they are too vulnerable to attack.  They take great pride in their physical accomplishments.  Most recently, they actually defeated the women’s team of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.  Khalida Popal, an official of the Afghan women’s soccer federation and long a team member, noted that “We wanted to show them Afghans are friendly people, not like the stupid people they are fighting.”

These women also reveal to us and to themselves the power of Afghan women to fight for themselves against great odds, and the importance of their struggle.  And as is the case of other instances of the politics of small things, such as the poetry café in Damascus I discussed in a previous post,  Afghanistan with its national women’s soccer team is a different place than it would be without these women playing and competing.  As I write this post, the Times reports, they are showing this difference in their first international competition, in Bangladesh in a tournament sponsored by the South Asian Football Federation.

Last night in my course on the sociology of Erving Goffman, we discussed the release of classified documents by WikiLeaks.  The students generally agreed with me that the publication was inappropriate and politically problematic.  I think actually only one person dissented from the consensus.  Given the general political orientation of the students and faculty of the New School, this was surprising.  We are far to the left of the general public opinion, to the left, in fact, of the political center of the American academic community.  Our first position is to be critical of the powers that be.

Why not disclose the inner workings of the global super power?  Why not “out” American and foreign diplomats for their hypocrisy?  We did indeed learn a lot about the world as it is through the WikiLeak disclosures.  On the one hand, Netanyahu apparently is actually for a two state solution, and on the other Arab governments are just as warlike in their approach to Iran as Israel.   China is not as steadfast in its support of North Korea and not as opposed to a unified Korea through an extension of South Korean sovereignty as is usually assumed.  And the Obama administration has been tough minded in coordinating international sanctions against Iran, as it has been unsteady with a series of awkward failures in closing Guantanamo Prison.

And, of course, The New York Times, yesterday justified publication, mostly in the name of the public’s right to know about the foibles of its government, and also noted today how the leaks reveal the wisdom and diplomatic success of the Obama administration.

Most of the opposition to the release is very specific.  It will hurt the prospects of peace in the Middle East.  It shows our hand to enemies, as it embarrasses friends.  But my concern, shared with my students is that as it undermines diplomacy, it increases the prospects for diplomacy’s alternatives.

In fact, given the social theorist we have been studying, Goffman, it actually is not that unexpected that my students and I share a concern about the latest from WikiLeaks.  Goffman studied social interaction.  He analyzed how people present themselves in everyday life, and the ritual practices that surround their presentations. He investigated the framing of action, which makes social understanding possible, and he investigates Forms of Talk , the book we were discussing last night.  Most crucially in understanding why we object to the leaks, he shows how all successful group interaction has a front and a back stage.  One is no more true than the other, nor does the presence of a backstage reveal the lie of the front stage.  In fact, the contamination of the front by the back can destroy successful interaction.  This is true of the performances that occur in a family and between families, among groups of individuals, at school, at work, and indeed in international diplomacy.   The contamination of the front by the back can lead to a breakdown in interaction.  Think of our relation with our friends and opponents, on the international stage but also down the block.  In order for successful interaction to occur, people have to share some things, hide others.

We did not proceed to have a political discussion about this last night.  After all, it was a class with its front and back stages and not a political event.  We saw the problem of staging as it illuminated a pressing topic of the day, but we actually didn’t declare and explain our political positions.  There were suggestions, but not careful exploration and debate.  I try to avoid that in my classes as a matter of principle.  I just had a sense of where people stood, perhaps they can reply to this post to fully explain their political positions.

But at DC, I can be more forthright.  I believe WikiLeaks’ disclosures present a clear and present danger to world peace.  I make this bold assertion not because of any particular piece of information that may be particularly damaging, though such information surely has been released.  But because the disclosures as a whole undermine the process of diplomacy as a form of interaction, when diplomacy is what stands between us and war and is a key tool to end foolish wars.  As I indicated in an earlier post, I am becoming more and more convinced that military solutions to the problems of the day are impractical, not likely to yield the desired results.  By  weakening diplomacy, war becomes the default option.  On good peacenik grounds, I am concerned.