When I was at Loyalist College, there were two students that took a plane to Afghanistan that landed in Kabul.
These students were returning to the theatre of death that two other students remember as a place where they followed orders and people died.
Whether it is Robert Capa or two energized students looking to solve the puzzle that will bring flowery peace to a killing machine, combat photojournalism has always been about the journalist taking the photos. They are dead people walking with no support or protection from the soldiers they photograph.
When Larry Burrows made and ended his career in Vietnam, one of the many things he discovered was the real reason behind the iconic rush to death that was being dropped off in a helicopter only to survive 20 minutes in the jungle.
The AC-130 flying gun ship is a plane that can fly out of range of rocket propelled grenade or machine gun fire while filling an entire jungle with bullets. This is called suppressive fire and in Vietnam a lot of soldiers died because they didn’t have that.
Burrows figured that out. His contribution was tremendous. He also photographed war for what it is, hell on earth. Those photos created more opposition to the war in Vietnam.
His contribution was two-fold with only one thing really being remembered, his anti-war activism.
The greatest combat photojournalists are the ones who are dead and have been for a long time. Only their best work is remembered and is utilized to drive the political narratives of others. Those two students that went Kabul came back alive. They cited their noble purist of understanding as their reason for going. What a shameful thing to do, considering there were two Afghan war veterans in the program, one of whom grew up in Afghanistan who put his life on the line to fight terrorism.
Those students went, just as many have before them, to chase death and play chicken with the devil. Some hate life and want to change it, or they have given up on it and are looking to die a hero.
They came back with some good stories but ultimately used all their content to blame the west for everything that is wrong with Afghanistan.
I will never forget what one retied soldier said to me, who was also a student of the program, when he saw the great noble work of those two students. He said if all you focus on is misery that is all you will find.
Public support for Vietnam was lost in part due to combat photojournalism but also due to the public seeing those types of images for the first time in history.
It has been speculated that Capa and his sidekick Gerda Taro created fake war photographs of a partisan nature in Spain when they were fighting the fascists during the Spanish Civil War.
Nothing more devoid of understanding is two evils fighting each other for a good that neither is capable of obtaining.
Despite the contradictions and personal reasons why people run into a war zone with a camera, whether ignorance, political or well vested in their work, they remind us all that war is hell and it would be great if we could avoid it.
No military force can meet and repel the power of western militaries, but if people here don’t want to have war, then the best strategy for those fighting the west is to be indistinguishable from civilians. That plan has worked.
If war was hell when you could tell who the bad guys are, I suspect now war is worse than hell, and for that reason, combat photojournalists are already dead. They are just waiting for their moral code to be destroyed, being witness to things they believed they understood.
With Canada going to Mali, guided by a leader who knows nothing about the depths of hell that humans can create, seeking words of wisdom from a man whose hands are tied with pointless politics, I suspect conflicting orders, multiple breakdowns in the chain of command and the death of Canadian soldiers are on the horizon.
I tip my hat to future photojournalists rushing off to get a crash course in what a 7.62x39-millimetre bullet really means. I wish them all the best even though they’re going into a situation they don’t understand.
