I swear that I did not see this before making my previous comment on the connection between domestic violence and war. Wow, what a timely article.
From the article:
Some 3,073 people were killed in the terrorist attacks on the United States on 9/11. Between that day and June 6, 2012, 6,488 US soldiers were killed in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, bringing the death toll for America’s war on terror at home and abroad to 9,561. During the same period, 11,766 women were murdered in the United States by their husbands or boyfriends, both military and civilian. The greater number of women killed here at home is a measure of the scope and the furious intensity of the war against women, a war that threatens to continue long after the misconceived war on terror is history.
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On the photos taken of the violence at home:
The photos are remarkable because the photographer is very good and the subject of her attention is so rarely caught on camera. Unlike warfare covered in Iraq and Afghanistan by embedded combat photographers, wife torture takes place mostly behind closed doors, unannounced and unrecorded.
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An excellent point–because in Communications, the Vietnam War is known as the media war —a war that was lost because of the diligence of the press–they brought the war home every night on the nightly news. People could see with their own eyes what was happening–politicians in Washington could not whitewash it. The violence we were doing to others could not be denied. The thought of a photographer taking photos while someone commits domestic violence makes my stomach turn…and at the same time, I’m thinking “is this what it takes to make it *real*….???” Do the people have to see photos of women beaten to a pulp on the nightly news, every night to grasp how horrible this is?
Here’s another report on domestic violence in Africa following war. Does the war cause domestic violence or is it a cycle repeating itself?