{"id":29685,"date":"2012-04-25T11:45:52","date_gmt":"2012-04-25T15:45:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=29685"},"modified":"2012-04-25T11:45:52","modified_gmt":"2012-04-25T15:45:52","slug":"an-infantryman-speaks-about-those-pictures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=29685","title":{"rendered":"An infantryman speaks about those pictures"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>StrikeFO sends us a link to an opinion piece in which John Rico, a veteran of Afghanistan preaches to the masses at Salon about &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/2012\/04\/23\/why_soldiers_take_photos\/singleton\/\">Why soldiers take picture<\/a>s&#8221;. He does the best job I&#8217;ve seen anywhere. I hope the regulars at Salon take note;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Taking a silly photo to relieve the stress doesn\u2019t strike me as the worst thing in the world, given the circumstances. The desire to document surreal experiences is a normal human motivation. Yes, in this particular context the details are rather gruesome, but this is a gruesome task we\u2019ve handed them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p>The real grotesqueness isn\u2019t in infantry soldiers taking a few war trophies. No, it\u2019s the idea that\u2019s been sold to the American public that war can be sterile. It\u2019s the idea that 18-year-olds who have been ordered to kill people will never  play with the body parts afterward.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>You should go read the whole thing and don&#8217;t forget to read the comments as Rico&#8217;s explanation, the first honest explanation I&#8217;ve read on the subject goes right over the pointy heads of Salon&#8217;s readers. <\/p>\n<p>Yeah, there&#8217;s an insurmountable divide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>StrikeFO sends us a link to an opinion piece in which John Rico, a veteran of &hellip; <a title=\"An infantryman speaks about those pictures\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=29685\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">An infantryman speaks about those pictures<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-military-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29685\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}