vietnamesque images from the iraq war.
Contemporary soldiers now watch Vietnam films such as Apocalypse Now, Platoon, and Full Metal Jacket not for their moods of a war gone terribly awry, but rather for the strange thrills of moral compromise experienced in the midst of battle. They want to experience the sublimity of quagmire, but now that many in the military are actually experiencing a war gone awry, other images from Vietnam are turning up. Among them are Maya Alleruzzo’s incredible images from Iraq, such as this one: U.S. Army Sgt. William Brayman, 25, from Warner Robins, Ga., with Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment in Beijia village in Arab Jabour, south of Baghdad, on Monday, Feb. 4, 2008.
Alleruzzo’s website contains other startling images from a surge that, because of how dangerous it is and how difficult it is to report on (and how much the US government and military want to control the narrative), has become largely invisible: a ghostly kind of surge whose actual images tell Vietnamesque stories.
- Image: Maya Alleruzzo, AP