Abstract
This article investigates the practice of post 9/11 US image warfare through an analysis of three sets of enemy capture and killing: Uday and Qusay Hussein, Saddam Hussein, and Osama bin Laden. Specifically, the article examines these images in terms of their potential to support, complicate, and/or undermine the strategic narratives of the Bush and Obama administrations as they relate to the Iraq War and the killing of Osama bin Laden, respectively. Today’s new media ecology complicates the relationship between images and strategic narratives. The analysis finds that the capture and death images of the Hussein family primarily served to reinforce the Bush administration strategic system narratives of American dominance and hegemony, the illegitimacy and oppression of the Hussein regime, and of ‘justice’; however, the images can also be interpreted as complicating and potentially undermining these same narratives. The absence of Osama bin Laden death images supported the Obama administration’s counter strategic narratives that focused more on an American identity of restraint and rule of law. The ‘situation room’ photo that became the representative image of the Bin Laden killing also reinforced given strategic narratives by providing a more innocuous and legitimate way, albeit still violent, to communicate a story of American military power and justice.
Introduction
In the last two decades, and especially since 9/11, more international relations (IR) and international security scholars are analyzing how contemporary IR is increasingly played out and understood visually, whether that be through media spectacle, contested visual representations, or visual securitization (Bleiker, 2001; Der Derian, 2005; Hansen, 2011; Hoskins and O’Loughlin, 2010; Mitchell, 1994; Roger, 2013). Conflicts and wars today are no longer only waged and ‘won’ through the material power of arms and technology, but through visual power embedded in images and the media. As the scholar well known for his writings on the visual and war, Paul Virilio, states: ‘the history of battle is primarily the history of radically changing fields of perception’ (Virilio, 2009: 7). The immediacy of digital images, their potential for wide distribution, and openness to multiple interpretation and uses, allows for discourses of war and conflicts that are increasingly shaped by the visual.
Many of the images of political violence and death connected to the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have become iconic, symbolic, and influential to the US promotion of strategic narratives related to foreign policy and security. 1 This article investigates and analyzes three image events to explore their relationship to US strategic narratives: the images of the dead bodies of the Hussein brothers, Uday and Qusay (July, 2003); images of Saddam Hussein’s capture and medical examination (December, 2003), and then execution by hanging (December, 2006); and the absent images of the killing and death of Osama bin Laden and the de facto stand-in photo of the ‘situation room’ – Obama and advisors as spectators of the raid (May, 2011). 2 I analyze these cases in the context of a recent framework on strategic narratives (Miskimmon et al., 2013) to understand the extent to which these images support, complicate, and/or undermine particular strategic narratives of each US administration at the time. This article will argue that some of the images under analysis can be read as strengthening and reinforcing US strategic narratives, but that some of these same images and other images can also be read as complicating and potentially undermining them. For example, I find that the images were able to bolster the state’s strategic narratives related to Saddam Hussein’s regime, and the killing of Bin Laden supported more general strategic narratives about the role of US power in the international system and international norms as connected to US identity and values (especially those connected to rule of law). Importantly, at the same time, I find that there were several complications, such as contradictions within the images themselves, and contradictions between images and the text or rhetoric of elites; moreover, as in the case of the video of the Hussein execution, the inability to control the images allowed for multiple meanings to come forth and for the images to take on another life. In short, images in their relationship to strategic narratives are not stable.
This study reveals that the process of creating, projecting, and analyzing strategic narratives is complicated, particularly in today’s media ecology. The changing media and technology landscape of image dissemination (e.g. social media, mobile devices) especially presents challenges for the use of images of death and violence. These types of images have had specific functions during wartime throughout history – of documenting war and conflict, and of revealing violence that the state may seek to downplay, for example – but today they have become weapons and tools in their own right, part of ‘image warfare’. To assess how these three cases of violent images relate to particular strategic narratives, the images will be analyzed in terms of their nature and content, the context in which the images were made and then disseminated, the direct statements by public officials in reference to the particular images, and the way media and scholars have analyzed and read them. In short, these cases from Iraq and the ‘war on terror’ reveal the challenges in engaging in visual warfare in a mediatized environment where one’s narratives will be challenged, contested, and re-interpreted. 3
This article makes a contribution to the scholarship on political communication, and specifically regarding images and war by applying the concept of strategic narratives to images specifically. As Miskimmon et al. (2013: 22) explain, ‘Since leaders must seek to manage and respond to this visual aspect of international relations, this entails learning how to visualize narrative and fit visuals of ongoing events into long-term strategic narratives.’ Images have the potential to create a sense of shared understanding and to communicate important interests, goals, and values to other actors in the international system, including non-state actors such as terrorists who continue to strategically use violent images as weapons, and to communicate to publics both at home and abroad. However, as this article shows, it is not just the content of an image that may be significant, but the messages and/or symbols that it communicates, thus the important link to narratives. 4 This study should be seen as examining foundational issues – that is, before one can examine questions of effect and effectiveness of images vis-à-vis strategic narratives (or questions of government intention or audience reception), we need to establish the ways that image and text (as narratives) interact, particularly in the context of mediatized conflict and war. Additionally, there is limited scholarship examining and comparing these particular types of images – of enemy death and bodies – and the role they play in foreign policy, political communication, and narratives.
Understanding image warfare and strategic narratives
Particularly since 9/11, there has been a burst of scholarship on the role of images, such as the visual spectacle of the 2001 attacks themselves, and the ubiquity and proliferation of images used by both state and non-state actors in the ‘war on terror’ and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (Der Derian, 2005; Griffin, 2004; Hasian, 2012; Kellner, 2006; Kennedy, 2012; Mirzoeff, 2005; Mitchell, 2011; Tulloch and Blood, 2012; Zelizer, 2010). 5 This has occurred in the context of the new shifts in media ecology: access, speed, production, and new media outlets, particularly concerning visual media. One sub-theme of the scholarship on images and conflict is the process of image warfare and how images are used as munitions (Hansen, 2011; Hoskins and O’Loughlin, 2010; Kellner, 2006; O’Loughlin, 2011; Roger, 2013). Roger (2013: 46) explains the concept of ‘image warfare’ whereby ‘today, the media and images constitute a distinct theatre of war – alongside land, sea and air – with images as key weapons (equivalent to bullets, bombs, missiles and mines) used to gain a specific strategic advantage over the enemy.’ 6 He shows how Al-Qaeda has been particularly successful in deploying image munitions against the US and UK that have been difficult to compete with. Seeing images as potential weapons is tied to their role in strategic narratives since in both cases governments can use them to gain advantage over others, to support their national interests, to reinforce their actions. As weapons and supporters of strategic narratives, images (and photographs in particular) can have emotional power and appeal, and they have had important socio-political effects, especially in their representation of violence and suffering (Swimelar, 2014). The power and status of photographs is often attributed to their seeming permanence, the sense of reality frozen in a single moment which adds to their emotional power (Hoskins and O’Loughlin, 2010: 23). As we will see in the cases presented here, this emotional force and resonance is one key way that images can support particular strategic narratives.
Strategic narratives are understood as ‘representations of a sequence of events and identities, a communicative tool through which political actors – usually elites – attempt to give determined meaning to past present and future in order to achieve political objectives’ (Miskimmon et al., 2013: 5). Narratives allow various political actors to construct shared meanings of political events and help shape the opinion of actors at home and abroad. 7 Miskimmon et al. identify three types of strategic narratives: system narratives, identity narratives, and issue narratives. System narratives are about the nature of the structure of international affairs. They set out the key actors in international relations, their characteristics and their role (particularly for great powers that have certain expected roles to fulfill) (pp. 7, 177). Identity narratives are about the identities of actors in international affairs that are in a process of constant negotiation and contestation. Issue narratives are strategic in the sense of seeking to shape the terrain on which policy discussions take place (p. 7). Political actors can use narratives to achieve various communicative goals such as agenda setting, legitimation, diverting attention, securing acquiescence, enhancing popularity, and mobilization (p. 8). In this way, images have the power to support or complicate US government narratives about the Iraq War and the ‘war on terror’.
How can images communicate narratives and, more specifically, how can an image support a strategic narrative? Images, particularly photographs and images related to war and violence, can communicate a narrative or help construct one because they can reveal in visual form a particular action or event that can hold meaning and symbolism for viewers related to state power, victory, and to the perception of enemies, for instance. In the case of the US war in Iraq for example, ‘the war image performs the American victory’ (Mirzoeff, 2005: 77) rather than its representational accuracy. Images can visually tell a story, or part of a story, through communicating the causes or effects of a particular action. Images can make important claims about power – who holds it, who does not, the effects of power, and how we should respond to it. Moreover, despite the constructed nature of many images, they can also provide evidence for claims and actions that are crucial for an actor in telling a story and in trying to convince an audience. Mitchell (2011: xvii) reminds us that images are both ‘verbal and visual entities, both metaphors and graphic symbols’. These features lend themselves well to contributing to strategic narratives. Finally, visualizing violence and death can add an individual and personal element to a story thus increasing its potential emotional resonance for an audience, 8 which is a key way that images can support and complicate US strategic narratives, as we will see in the cases under consideration. In short, narratives are often about shared meanings and images, but they do not speak on their own, and thus gain significance through the way actors use and contexualize them. Miskimmon et al. (2013: 125) note that the power of images is more about what audiences connect to those images than to the pure content of those images. The case of the ‘absent’ Bin Laden killing photo and the stand-in ‘situation room’ photo analyzed below illustrate this point.
Significance of enemy body and death images
This section briefly looks at the significance of images of enemy body and death images and a discussion of why the particular images under review were chosen. These images are appropriate ones to examine their relationship to strategic narratives in part because there was direct government involvement in their production and dissemination, and they were widely viewed across media platforms. Moreover, the chosen images function in three different ways: as trophy images (the Hussein brothers and Saddam Hussein), humiliation images (Saddam Hussein), and absent images (Bin Laden).
Images of death during conflict have a long history both during and outside of war. They are significant for the multiple purposes they serve – to document, provide evidence (for both home and enemy audiences), to bear witness, to celebrate, to humiliate the enemy, to serve as a spectacle, to persuade, and more (Mieszkowski, 2012; Sontag, 2003; Taylor, 1998).
Azoulay (2012: 4) notes how death images ‘ossillate between spectacle and exhibit’. Revealing images of ‘our’ dead is less common than images of ‘their’ dead during conflict, but both can serve particular political purposes. Enemy death images can reveal power, dominance, humiliation, and more, and as shown below, this is how the images under review can be seen as supporting American strategic narratives at the time. Butler (2010) examines, for example, how images of enemy death represent lives that are ‘ungrievable’, thus making it easier and perhaps more important for political and military leaders to make use of them.
One of the more common roles of images of enemy bodies and death is the concept of human trophy taking, a common practice historically during war; however, today’s new media ecology means that the audience and timing for representations of these trophies have vastly expanded and their strategic uses have expanded as well. Human trophies during conflict usually refer to the taking of tangible human remains to show dominance over the deceased and celebrate ‘victory’. But trophy taking also refers to creating, disseminating, and celebrating images of the dead, e.g. trophy photographs. Thus they can be used to support a narrative about dominance, power and victory, making them strategically useful. 9 Nazi soldiers reveled in documenting their crimes and torture of victims, and countless photographs were taken. There are other examples involving photographic trophy taking today, such as those of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. What is new is that in such a visually saturated environment, the practice has become communal and global as these images often are disseminated through the internet and social media (even in real time) in a way that can have maximum effect if a state seeks to put forth a particular image to be used strategically, or if soldiers on the ground seek to showcase their dominance over the enemy, as in the case in Iraq.
The images of the dead bodies of the Hussein brothers (Uday and Qusay) after they were killed by US forces, and the image of the capture and later killing of Saddam Hussein fit well into the trophy image concept and are good cases to choose to examine strategic narratives, given the US government’s explicit choice in releasing these particular images, the publicity surrounding their release, and the government’s response to them. The brothers were featured as two of the top wanted men in Iraq in the US military’s ‘deck of cards’ (the ace of hearts and ace of clubs, after Saddam himself). The creation and dissemination in early 2003 of the playing card deck featuring photographs of all the ‘wanted’ fits squarely within the concept of image warfare – the enemy is a symbol, a card, a picture – more than a traditional combatant or even a human being. 10
Humiliation images serve to shame and dishonor the subject in the photograph. While a trophy image could strive for a similar goal, the humiliation image of enemies who are alive speaks more to the status of the powerless subject in the photo and less about the status of the image-maker or ‘victor’. The very act of taking a photograph is political in that the image-maker has a level of power and control over the subject and how this subject will be represented, thus making it possible that a subject can be framed in a humiliating way. The taking and disseminating of specific images of the capture of Saddam Hussein, his medical examination, and his subsequent execution by hanging were not simply images to share information about Saddam Hussein. They were salient and relevant images of humiliation that contributed to a shared meaning about Saddam’s status from the US perspective. Thus, these image sets were chosen given their particular function in relation to the Iraq War and the Bush administration’s narratives (as described below). Moreover, these images were widely viewed across the world and have become the iconic photos most people recall when thinking about the demise of Saddam Hussein.
In addition to trophy images and humiliation images, there is another type that I call the ‘absent’ image. This is exemplified here as the case of the non-image of Osama bin Laden’s death and body and the ‘situation room’ photo of President Obama and national security advisors as a stand-in or absent image for this killing. Despite the fact that the post 9/11 wars have been overwhelmingly mediatized and visualized, it is ironic that the death of the instigator of the 2001 terrorist attacks and the US’s number one enemy would be met by relative invisibility, especially compared to the way Saddam Hussein was so visible. While many American citizens and soldiers have come to see Osama bin Laden as the representation of evil, they have not been able to see a bloody corpse, or even images of the secret raid and capture in Abbotobad, Pakistan on 2 May 2011 to provide the proof, seeming closure, trophies, and shots of humiliation that many of them may crave. The Obama administration’s narrative surrounding these ‘absent’ photographs is examined in the analysis section.
US leadership strategic narratives and images of enemy bodies
The Bush administration and the killing of the Hussein brothers: The beginning of the end of the regime
This central section first lays out the specific strategic narratives of the US leadership in each case under review. Then, each image is assessed in terms of how it contributed to, undermined, and/or complicated the strategic narratives. Regarding the sets of images of the Iraqi leadership – Hussein’s sons’ bodies, the capture of Hussein, and the execution of Hussein – US leadership narratives should be understood in light of the wider strategic foreign policy goals of the Iraq War of 2003. The Bush administration’s strategic narrative following the 9/11 attacks was that the United States and all of civilization was at war with terrorism, that ‘justice’ (in the form of military power/response) was necessary, and that Iraq and its dictator Saddam Hussein were tangible causes of global insecurity, aggression, and terrorism. This strategic narrative concerns the system, identities, and issues. As Bush made clear in his speech to the nation on 20 September 2001:
Whether we bring our enemies to justice, or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done … This is not, however, just America’s fight. And what is at stake is not just America’s freedom. This is the world’s fight. This is civilization’s fight. This is the fight of all who believe in progress and pluralism, tolerance and freedom. (Bush, 2001)
It is important to note that in this narrative, ‘justice’ seems to refer to removing or even killing one’s enemies; it does not refer to a more traditional notion of justice as a fair criminal trial resulting in a judgment. However, as will be seen later, the Bush administration narrative of justice changes when it refers to the fact that Saddam Hussein had a trial and was found guilty as a result.
In President George W Bush’s National Security Strategy of 2002, US goals consist of seeking hegemony, preempting potential attacks from state or non-state actors, and spreading ‘freedom’ and democracy to places like the Middle East (National Security Strategy, 2002). According to the Bush administration, in order to both achieve security and bring freedom to the Iraq people, the regime had to be removed. 11 There is a clear sequence of events and a cause/effect understanding of the post-9/11 environment and what led to the invasion. We also see an allusion to the identity of the US that stands in contrast to that of enemies. Rhetoric and speeches related to terrorism and the Hussein regime reveal a simple worldview of ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’ and a story of victory (for the US) and defeat (for Iraq and terrorists).
The narrative surrounding the images themselves reinforces the wider narratives. President Bush stated in response to the killing of the Hussein brothers, Uday and Qusay:
Yesterday in the city of Mosul, the careers of two of the regime’s chief henchmen came to an end. Saddam Hussein’s sons were responsible for the torture, maiming, and murder of countless Iraqis. Now more than ever, all Iraqis can know the former regime is gone and will not be coming back. (‘Bush applauds death of Hussein brothers’, 2003).
Thus, the two main narratives are of a certain kind of justice served and of an official end to the regime.
When the Pentagon announced that the brothers had been killed in a firefight in Mosul, Iraq, in July 2003, the Iraqi public was incredulous and believed it was some type of hoax (Roger, 2013). As Roger chronicles, to prove the brothers were dead, to win support of the Iraqi public, and to ‘regain control of the spectacle of war’, the Pentagon used their deaths politically and strategically through several explicit photographs disseminated quite publicly (p. 130). The Pentagon released several photographs that reveal the brothers’ faces and heads, bloodied and partially smashed (‘US releases photos of Hussein sons’, 2003). There is a related set of photographs showing the sons’ corpses lying on a gurney that can be seen as companions to the gruesome death images (and support the arguments made here), but that were not disseminated as widely across the media (though they can easily be seen online). BBC News, for example, published them (‘Saddam’s sons: Should bodies be shown?’, 2003) and they can be found on YouTube.com. 12
The Pentagon released images of the dead sons that were widely circulated across the Middle East, in news broadcasts and in print, and in sources such as Al-Jazeera and beyond. For example, the photos were published in newspapers in Egypt, Saudia Arabia, Kuwait, and Palestine, and in some cases on the front cover (‘Pictures of Saddam’s sons splashed across Arab front pages’, 2003). In the case of Egypt, the pictures were published with no comment, thus highlighting the role of the images directly as a communication tool. Major US news broadcast outlets, such as Fox, CNN, ABC, CBS, and MSNBC also aired the photographs, but not in their online articles about the deaths. Major US newspapers such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Chicago Tribune, while all reporting on and describing the gruesome photographs, did not publish them either online or in print, with the exceptions of USA Today, The Baltimore Sun, and some smaller, more local papers. Many media outlets, such as The Washington Post reported not only on the deaths, but on the unusual act of the Pentagon releasing such gruesome photos (Shadid and Sullivan, 2003). However, numerous smaller and alternative online media outlets and blogs in the US did disseminate them, such as Indymedia and Middle East Online. Outside the US, in addition to China Daily, in the UK, BBC News, The Guardian, and The Telegraph did publish the photographs, but no other major British or German newspapers did. Clearly, mainstream media newspapers did not find it appropriate to publish the photos, but they did significantly report on the sons’ deaths, the grisly photos, and the ethical debate on both releasing and publishing them. This likely does not reduce the power of the photos since people in the Middle East, a key audience for US strategic narratives on Iraq, had easy viewing access. Moreover, American audiences that often receive their news from cable and TV news were likely to have seen the photos and/or they could easily search for the images online after learning about them and find countless web sources.
The main explicit goal of releasing the images fits with one of the conventional roles of photography concerning political violence – to provide evidence and proof. The US administration argued that Iraqis demanded the release of the photos as evidence to a skeptical Iraqi public (‘Bush applauds death of Hussein brothers’, 2003; Shadid and Sullivan, 2003). These death images reinforced a strategic narrative aimed at average Iraqis that the Hussein regime was collapsing and that it should be seen as both illegitimate and oppressive – the old regime is literally dead as in the faces of the sons of the ancien regime. 13 This ties into Bush’s statements justifying the Iraq war on grounds of removing a dictator. This reading also by consequence can support the wider wartime narrative of American power, hegemony, and victory in Iraq. With the old regime dying, Americans should be seen as the de facto new and legitimate power (even if in reality at the time this was not the case). These images reinforced ideas about who are the most important actors in the system and how the US as a great power will use its power. In this sense, the images could be read as trophies aimed to support a narrative of victory and dominance over the enemy.
At the same time, these death images complicate the Bush administration’s strategic narratives that focused on justice for Iraqis and the death of the regime in the context of a civilizational conflict. It could be argued that there is a contradiction between the gruesome corpses of their former leaders that Iraqis saw and the rhetoric of the Bush administration focused on justice, freedom, and democracy for Iraq. For many spectators, these images could be read as supporting different narratives related to revenge, trophy taking, and even US aggression. Justice in terms of the rule of law or criminal proceedings was not in force here. The death of the regime for many spectators does not translate into security, peace, or democracy. At the same time, the graphic nature of these photos was deemed as inappropriate and humiliating, and in contradiction to the rhetoric of human rights and decency that the US championed. One Jordanian political analyst stated, ‘When Iraq broadcast photos of dead American soldiers, the U.S. considered that against human rights. So, why are they violating that now by showing such inhumane pictures?’ (‘Photos of Saddam’s sons released’, 2003). Thus, the Bush administration aimed to promote a particular strategic identity narrative, but the images themselves complicated and even undermined this narrative.
However, the US leadership seemed to recognize this potential contradiction and tried to use the event as an occasion to try and reinforce identity narratives focused on US adherence to international law and norms of decency. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld argued that the photos of Hussein’s sons were in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. Furthermore, Rumsfeld said, ‘As the one who made the decision to do it [release the photos], I can say it was not a snap decision. This is not a practice the United States engages in on a normal basis’ (Peralta, 2011, emphasis added). This additional rhetoric that gave particular meaning and content to the images can be seen as an attempt to use these images to support a US strategic identity narrative. Nevertheless, it is likely that the photos spoke louder than Rumsfeld’s defense and explanation of them. Other administration officials such as Lt General Ricardo Sanchez conceded that there is a dilemma in releasing photos in that Americans may appear to be ‘gloating’, but in the end, the need to reveal outweighed other concerns (Macfarquhar and Banerjee, 2003).
An additional complication between the images and text is that Paul Bremer, US administrator in Iraq at the time, said that he expected an initial increase in attacks on US forces due to the release of the photos; thus one could interpret the images not as aiding in security, but as undermining it. Since ‘making America safe’ was a central narrative of the Bush administration, this claim could be called into question if the images are seen as inflammatory and unnecessary.
The humiliation and end of Saddam Hussein
In his speech to the nation following the capture of Saddam on 14 December 2003, President Bush, similarly in the case of the Hussein brothers, promoted the (contested) narrative of the Iraqi people’s freedom from torture and dictatorship now that the regime is over and the concept of a common US–Iraqi goal of justice and freedom:
All Iraqis who take the side of freedom have taken the winning side. The goals of our coalition are the same as your goals: sovereignty for your country, dignity for your great culture, and for every Iraqi citizen, the opportunity for a better life. In the history of Iraq, a dark and painful era is over. A hopeful day has arrived. All Iraqis can now come together and reject violence and build a new Iraq. (‘In Bush’s words’, 2003)
At the time of Saddam’s capture, President Bush also reinforced the common ‘war on terror’ narrative, specifically that the war and the enemy are different than in the past, and therefore new rules are required in order to be victorious and secure. ‘Liberty’ and ‘freedom’ are oft repeated concepts in the way President Bush puts forth a narrative related to Iraq:
The war on terror is a different kind of war, waged capture by capture, cell by cell and victory by victory. Our security is assured by our perseverance and by our sheer belief in the success of liberty. And the United States of America will not relent until this war is won. (Transcript of Bush’s speech on Saddam’s capture, 2003)
Regarding the next set of images of Saddam’s execution by hanging on 30 December 2006, President Bush responded similarly by focusing more on the supposed benefits for Iraq’s future and less on US power or victory; indeed he noted that violence and insecurity will continue despite Saddam’s death. In his statement, he emphasized the common narrative that the US has delivered justice, in this case in the form of a fair trial, noting that this is something Saddam never gave his own people:
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Saddam Hussein’s execution comes at the end of a difficult year for the Iraqi people and for our troops. Bringing Saddam Hussein to justice will not end the violence in Iraq, but it is an important milestone on Iraq’s course to becoming a democracy that can govern, sustain, and defend itself, and be an ally in the War on Terror. (President Bush’s statement on execution of Saddam Hussein, 2006)
President Bush closed his statement emphasizing American security, thus reinforcing the longstanding claim about why the US waged war in Iraq: ‘Yet the safety and security of the American people require that we not relent in ensuring that Iraq’s young democracy continues to progress.’
Once the revered and feared long-term authoritarian leader of Iraq, Saddam Hussein’s life ended in a series of global communal visual spectacles of capture and execution that I consider to be humiliation images. While the Saddam Hussein images could also be considered trophy images, they better serve as humiliation images that contrast with the images of masculine power that Iraqis were used to seeing: for example, the well-known photos of him in military uniform, pointing or shooting a gun in the air. The iconic images of his final years illustrate how images can complicate strategic narratives through their ambiguity and multiple meanings; that is, the images of Hussein under review here could both support and counter the Bush administration strategic narratives about the Iraq War and the Hussein regime. Specifically, they can complicate the administration’s strategic narratives since we can find contradictions between the content and connotation of the image when compared to the rhetoric (text).
Two main images are thus significant and relevant here. 15 The first is a video and screen capture of Saddam having a health inspection after his capture in December 2003 that includes a doctor checking his head for lice and another that shows the inside of Saddam’s mouth being inspected. The main image that mainstream US media disseminated related to Saddam’s capture is a mug shot of him heavily bearded and dirty, for example appearing on the front page of The New York Times on 14 December, a stark contrast to the powerful looking leader prior to the war. However, many media sources also disseminated the more emotive and humiliating image (or video) from his health (specifically mouth) inspection, such as ABC, NBC, Fox News, USA Today, and The Telegraph. The second image is the video and screen captures from Saddam’s hanging on 30 December 2006. This video and image were also widely disseminated across the American and global media landscape, both broadcast and in print. For example, the photograph of the noose around Hussein’s neck appeared in The Washington Post and on the front page of The New York Times on 31 December 2006; the latter also described how all over Iraq, people gathered around televisions to watch replays of the gripping video of Hussein being led to the gallows by masked executioners and having a noose lowered around his neck (Burns, 2006).
The New York Times stated:
Mr. Hussein, sporting a bushy salt-and-pepper beard, was first shown on television undergoing a medical exam for head lice. The pictures electrified and shocked Iraqis and the larger Arab world, with some cheering and some appalled to see a captive Arab leader put on undignified display. (MacFarquhar, 2006)
This illustrates how the image can support Bush’s strategic narratives of a powerful and victorious United States over a weak and defeated enemy and a particular form of ‘justice’. Visual theorist Mirzoeff illustrates the significance of the video and how these images reveal the US to be a hyperpower with the ‘right to look’:
The endlessly repeated video clip of Saddam being examined by a doctor presented the U.S. as a benign power, concerned for the health of even its worst enemy. It may also have been a search for poison or concealed information. More precisely, it represented modern biopower,
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the use of power to sustain life even and especially when the state is on the point of withdrawing that life. (Mirzoeff, 2011: 288)
This interesting point reveals how the image can serve multiple purposes in revealing the US as both dominant and powerful, but also humanitarian – both of these readings can support the administration’s multiple narratives. Thus, even though Bush downplayed a narrative of American hegemony and military power, the images could be read as supporting these types of system narratives. Thus this narrative of power does not need to be explicitly repeated in the rhetoric since the visuals can accomplish the task of symbolically representing it. While this may seem like incongruence between image and text, it reveals that images can highlight elements of a narrative that state leaders may not wish to make overly obvious. The end of this section provides further analysis for the Hussein images collectively.
Hussein was hanged on 30 December 2006, a precarious time in the war when US public support started to fall (Zelizer, 2010: 293). The execution was closed to the public and an official video version of the hanging was made public as a way to provide closure and proof of death, similar to the images of Hussein’s sons. However, the power of new media meant that the US and Iraqi authorities could not ensure that other images would not leak and therefore provide multiple interpretations of the execution, which served to complicate the strategic narratives of the US administration. The official video made available to news organizations showed a silent sequence of Hussein being led up to the gallows with a scarf and noose being placed around his neck. The video was one-minute long and did not show the actual death. This video and stills from it were played widely on Iraqi TV and US news outlets.
That same evening, an unofficial video surfaced that told a different story. Filmed secretly by a guard with a camera phone, this death narrative included sounds – yelling and insults (‘go to hell’) from the crowd below (Zelizer, 2010). Guards also chanted ‘Moqtada! Moqtada!’ (referring to one of Saddam’s enemies, the Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, thus injecting a sectarian political angle to the event (Mirzoeff, 2011: 290)). Hussein responded to the verbal abuse and then started praying and then ‘as if sensing that the spectacle was not progressing as intended, the executioner opened the trapdoor of the gallows before the prayer was complete’ (p. 290). One visual theorist described the cell phone video as ‘a palpable horror, a digitized rendition of the realities of the quasi-judicial process’. The final image is a close-up of his corpse, with eyes wide. One news organization noted that the independent video made clear ‘that the seemingly quiet, dignified send-off portrayed on the official video [did] not tell the whole story’ (Zelizer, 2010: 296).
Within 48 hours of the hanging, the official video had been viewed more than one million times on YouTube, while there were 350,000 viewings of the unofficial independent version (p. 296). ‘One form of violent propaganda was replaced by another’, argue Hoskins and O’Loughlin (2010: 33). These death images and videos became the visual final chapter in the US–Saddam Hussein battle and the Iraqi regime that the US sought to topple. They had emotional resonance, and at the same time could be said to reveal both certainty and closure on the one hand, and ambiguity on the other. Having an emotional power with some level of ambiguity are two characteristics that are likely to help make narratives strategic (Miskimmon et al., 2013), but at the same time if an image is too open to multiple meanings, then it can complicate a strategic narrative rather than directly support it. However, the violence and shock value of the images themselves – the walk up to the gallows, the black hood, the rope (and the death moment in the second video) could complicate their ability to support the administration’s narratives about justice (much less freedom and democracy in Iraq) since they could be read as trophy and humiliation images and as unjust retribution as part of an illegitimate war. The second unofficial video illustrates the power of regular citizens and new media to challenge and subvert official narratives. As Hoskins and O’Loughlin (2010: 35) astutely conclude:
The shaky mobile phone coverage of the execution of Saddam Hussein served to amplify his unscripted, undignified, and chaotic end and undermined the cause of those desiring an orderly execution to demonstrate the competency of the then fledgling Iraqi administration.
Since any one image can have multiple meanings, it is no surprise that the two videos presented mixed and multiple messages that could support and oppose given narratives. As Barbie Zelizer explains in her book About to Die (2010), ‘contingency and imagination suggest that closure around images is rarely achieved and that they may provide the necessary leakage through which visual meaning can change’ (p. 7). She speaks of the ‘voice’ of an image referring to ‘the ways in which an image’s meaning is used for a wide variety of strategies and objectives, all of which increase over time and space’ (p. 13). There was careful deliberation about when Hussein’s execution should take place and the details of it, given that different choices served different narratives and competing camps in the war. The choice of showing the ‘about to die’ moment rather than a death image as in the case of his sons was explicitly chosen as a less graphic middle ground that could address the concerns of those both supporting and opposing the Iraq War (p. 294).
The release of the more tame (silent) execution video that has a more somber tone of justice can be seen as more likely to support a US strategic identity narrative of the rule of law was complicated by the second unofficial video that presents a different narrative altogether. This counter narrative would see the US as creating and then taking sides in a sectarian conflict and of flexing its imperialist muscles by humiliating a leader that dared to challenge it. In short, these execution images had the ability to speak to different audiences depending upon their political attitudes. And they reveal that for political leaders, there is no easy interpretation to the relationship between images and strategic narratives.
Despite the multiple readings and interpretations of the execution images, I argue that all of the Hussein images examined here can support a wider strategic system narrative – that of the ability of a superpower to dominate and humiliate enemies and, specifically, the ability to take down unruly authoritarian leaders. The images transformed Saddam Hussein from a symbol of defiance toward the United States to a beaten belittled subject who has lost all control and power, even over his own body. While these images could be read as supporting the administration’s strategic narratives, they can also be interpreted as complicating or even undermining them. For example, Bush tended to focus on narratives of justice, freedom, and democracy, with specific reference to the interests of the Iraqi people. And while some spectators, depending upon their perspective on the Iraq War and the Hussein regime, may see congruence between the death and humiliation images and the administration’s rhetoric, others may see the opposite. That is, one can easily read these images as not representing justice, freedom, or democracy; by contrast, the violence and humiliation they portray can reinforce a narrative of American militarism, aggression, and unjust war against a weak leader. What the administration sees as ‘justice’ in these images could be read as unjust violence or revenge. In short, the Bush administration’s changing meaning of ‘justice’ from early on linked to military dominance and removing or killing an enemy, to later with the Hussein execution, being linked to criminal proceedings and law, complicate our ability to link the narratives with the images.
Notions of human rights and humanitarianism do not reveal themselves in these images under review. Thus, a potential contradiction between image and text means that these images may not be helpful or supportive of the Bush administration narratives. It is also not clear how any of these images could help reinforce the administration’s narratives about security, both for the United States and more globally, both of which were aspects of the Iraq War strategic narratives.
The Obama administration: Imagining Osama bin Laden – the absent image and displaced violence
The final case to be analyzed concerns images related to the killing of Osama bin Laden, specifically the absence of a death image and the ‘situation room’ photo as a stand-in image. First, President Obama’s wider strategic narratives related to conflict in the Middle East had both similarities and differences with his predecessor – there was still a focus on terrorism as the most important security threat, yet Obama emphasized Al-Qaeda specifically and rejected the notion of a global ‘war on terror’ (Burkeman, 2009; Obama, 2009a, 2009b). He also emphasized global cooperation and multilateralism to a greater extent and downplayed the role of military power in achieving both American and global policy objectives (and argued against a policy of pre-emption) (Reynolds, 2010; White House, 2010). Most notably, the Obama administration presented a narrative of American values founded on the rule of law and the rejection of practices such as torture, seen as more identity narratives (Obama, 2009b; White House, 2010). He aimed to draw a distinction between ‘us’ and the ‘terrorists’ in terms of moral behavior. While, in practice, Obama found it difficult to completely shift policy away from all of the Bush era counter-terrorism policies, the narratives about ‘who we are’, and how the US should achieve its goals do differ. These particular narratives come into play when analyzing the debate over the visual representation of the killing of Osama bin Laden.
Osama bin Laden was killed by the US military in a secret night-time raid in Abbotobad, Pakistan on 2 May 2011. What were the strategic narratives put forth by the Obama administration in relation to this significant event?
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In a 10-minute speech to the nation following the killing, President Obama wove a familiar narrative of the monumental tragedy of the 9/11 attacks and the vast and varied response efforts of both the US military and civilian leadership to find those responsible, to prevent future attacks, and to uphold American values. The theme of ‘justice’ appeared here just as it did in the Bush administration when referring to the Hussein brothers and destroying enemies (not necessarily referring to criminal trials). In particular, President Obama noted the importance of the event for American victory over Al-Qaeda in a way that echoed President Bush’s declaring the end of the Hussein regime, but at the same time stressing that there will still be insecurity and violence:
The death of bin Laden marks the most significant achievement to date in our nation’s effort to defeat Al-Qaeda. Yet his death does not mark the end of our effort. There’s no doubt that Al-Qaeda will continue to pursue attacks against us. We must – and we will – remain vigilant at home and abroad. (White House, 2011)
Obama also implicitly stressed values related to religious tolerance by stating: ‘we must affirm that the United States is not – and never will be – at war with Islam’, in addition to broader American values, a point he made often:
Tonight we are once again reminded that Americans can do whatever we set our mind to. That is the story of our history, whether it be the pursuit of prosperity for our people, or the struggle for equality for all our citizens; our commitment to stand up for our values abroad, and our sacrifices to make the world a safer place. (White House, 2011)
Compared to the Bush administration, despite the fact that this particular enemy death was so significant and relevant to US strategic narratives related to counter-terrorism and conflict in the Middle East, why did the Obama administration decide not to release any photos? The absence of gruesome enemy death images in this particular case supports President Obama’s particular strategic narratives at the time, just as the taking and disseminating of the famous ‘situation room’ photo as the stand-in image equally reinforces these same narratives.
The case of the Bin Laden photos illustrates that, in a time of image warfare, the administration was cognizant of the need to control the visual space in order to try and control the narrative about the killing. The Obama administration successfully kept hidden the most high-profile enemy death image imaginable by banning cell phones and cameras by agents and soldiers who were physically close to the raid and the processing of the body afterward and by being able to enforce a ban on the release of the official photos that have only been seen by some US leaders. 18
The administration did consider releasing photos of Bin Laden as proof or evidence that he was killed. Officials knew that, given the high profile nature of the case and the symbolic importance of Bin Laden, many Al-Qaeda members and others would be skeptical that he was really dead. Illustrating the ‘need to see’ in this new media ecology, very soon after the announcement of Bin Laden’s death, a number of bloody hoax images appeared online (Hill, 2011). After some deliberation, however, the administration and the CIA decided not to release any photos. One main reason given by the administration for not releasing them was the nature of the photographs themselves. According to CNN, a government official says that the problem is that the most recognizable image of Bin Laden ‘is so gruesome and mangled [that] it’s not appropriate for, say, the front page of the newspaper’ (Yellin, 2011). This is significant given that the photos of Uday and Qusay Hussein were macabre as well, but deploying them served specific political and strategic needs at the time and supported Bush administration narratives.
Related to the argument about the nature of the images, the Obama administration’s second argument for not releasing photos was national security. One judge denied the release of the photos on national security grounds (Gerstein, 2012). One Congress member agreed and referenced the spike in violence after the Abu Ghraib (Iraqi detainee abuse) photos and said the risk to release them was too high (‘More lawmakers want photos of bin Laden’s body released’, CNN News). President Obama’s own explanation on CBS’s ‘60 minutes’ on 4 May 2011 is worth quoting in full to illustrate both how images can be weapons and the connection to US strategic narratives.
You know, we discussed this [releasing the photos] internally. Keep in mind that we are absolutely certain this was him. We’ve done DNA sampling and testing. And so there is no doubt that we killed Osama bin Laden. It is important for us to make sure that very graphic photos of somebody who was shot in the head are not floating around as an incitement to additional violence. As a propaganda tool. You know, that’s not who we are. You know, we don’t trot out this stuff as trophies. You know, the fact of the matter is this was somebody who was deserving of the justice that he received. And I think Americans and people around the world are glad that he’s gone. But we don’t need to spike the football. And I think that given the graphic nature of these photos, it would create some national security risk. And I’ve discussed this with Bob Gates and Hillary Clinton and my intelligence teams and they all agree. (CBS Interview, 2011, emphasis added)
Obama’s statement and decision illustrates how different administrations can deploy (or not deploy) images strategically during war – he specifically rejects the practice used by the Bush administration regarding the Hussein images. Relatedly, it illustrates how images can be read by spectators to support or oppose particular strategic narratives and, in this case, since gruesome images of Bin Laden’s corpse had the potential to undermine the administration’s narratives, it made sense why the decision was made not to release them. Obama’s ‘that’s not who we are’ phrase invokes a strategic identity narrative (i.e. a superiority of ‘our’ values) and also illustrates the process of image warfare and narrative contestation with Al-Qaeda and other Jihadist groups who have engaged in trophy image making. Broadly, in the Bin Laden case, I argue that Obama is continuing a series of strategic narratives begun during his 2008 campaign that the US must stand by its values, not stoop to the level of terrorists, uphold international law, particularly human rights and humanitarian law, and that the US must be more prudent and careful to not incite violence in the Islamic world. 19 Thus, the decision not to release the Bin Laden photos should be seen as an attempt to put forth and reinforce a ‘new’ strategic narrative, one that differs from the previous administration’s ‘good versus evil’, and need to ‘go over to the dark side’ 20 approach. 21 In short, in this case, the absence of an enemy’s death images can be interpreted as support for the administration’s narratives.
As discussed in an earlier section, the prominent absent image that stands in for Bin Laden’s killing is the now famous ‘situation room’ photo that captures President Obama and his national security advisors, including then Secretary of State Clinton watching what we are told is the Bin Laden raid. This image was widely disseminated and viewed across all media platforms (print and online) both in the US and abroad, and still retains its iconic status years later (Crawford, 2012). This photo was taken by White House photographer Pete Souza (2011) and received 1.6 million online Flickr views in just 38 hours (J Johnson, 2011) and appeared on the front pages of major newspapers - The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and the Chicago Tribune (Kennedy, 2012). The photo is of President Obama, Secretary of State Clinton, and numerous national security advisors staring at what we are told is a screen in which they are watching some part of the Bin Laden raid. We are watching them watching violence. Thus, in a twist, the government officials as agents of Bin Laden’s death are spectators just as we the public are spectators. CNN said this may be a ‘photo for the ages’ that may define the Obama presidency, and compared it to other famous photos, such as a smiling Harry Truman after his upset win over Dewey in the 1948 election, holding up a copy of the Chicago Daily Tribune with the headline ‘Dewey Defeats Truman’ (Silverlieb, 2011).
As visual culture scholar Azoulay has argued, there need not be any actual violence in a photograph for it to be violent or to bring our imagination to violence (Azoulay, 2012). The ‘situation room’ photo exemplifies this point since each spectator can look at the image and imagine the raid and the execution – one need not see the gore of a bullet to the head by Navy Seals in order to imagine its existence. Violence and power are central to the ‘situation room’ photo, yet violence is displaced. In looking at the photo in detail and what it communicates, particularly striking is President Obama’s casual attire, his seated position in the left corner (not in the center of the frame), and hunting-dog like seriousness and pose. There is no doubt of his resolve to carry out this mission to destroy Bin Laden. Political analyst Cheryl Contee said ‘Obama’s willingness to be photographed without the typical Oval Office swagger gives birth to a new type of swagger’ (Blake, 2011). In short, these technical details can support a strategic narrative of American power and violence, but in a more muted and legitimate way compared to the Hussein images. This type of image of displaced violence could be seen as quite effective since it contains more drama and emotional resonance than an enemy death image may and can be seen as more acceptable, yet still reinforce a given narrative.
In the ‘situation room’ photo, violence and Bin Laden’s ‘about to die’ moment may exist even more in one’s imagination given the expression on Secretary of State Clinton’s face, which has been analyzed in the media and beyond. Her hand is covering her mouth and her eyes are glued ahead as if she is in horror or shock at what she is seeing – we can only imagine. The New York Times commented on Clinton’s facial expression, writing, ‘She is what the French critic Roland Barthes called the “punctum,” the not necessarily conspicuous detail that gives a photograph its emotional resonance’ (K Johnson, 2011). The ‘situation room’ photo illustrates Barbie Zelizer’s (2010) point of the ‘as if’ photograph described earlier that lends itself to multiple interpretations, imagination, and contingency. Spectators, depending upon their own political persuasions, could focus on killing Bin Laden as justice and revenge for 9/11, others can focus on the power of the state and the military to achieve its goals against ‘the enemy’, and still others could focus more on the authority and determination of the Obama administration to carry out a long stated goal. Overall, a narrative of American power and dominance can be reinforced. Thus, multiple interpretations do not necessarily complicate the strategic narratives of the administration, but all could potentially support them.
In conclusion, the ‘situation room’ photo has served multiple purposes that can support the Obama administration’s goals and strategic narratives: it allowed President Obama to avoid being seen as a cowboy who wants to parade around war trophies and flaunt the US’s militaristic power and prowess; it provided a seemingly innocuous, non-gruesome image for the public to focus on when there was some disappointment of having no photos to prove or symbolize the Bin Laden raid and killing; it served foreign policy goals for the administration in appearing both transparent (by revealing to the public this hidden power play room that so few people have seen) and tough on national security policy (by taking down Bin Laden). Furthermore, it will be a historic image to remind people of who was responsible for killing Bin Laden, something which a death photo could not easily do; lastly, related to strategic identity narratives, it served to promote a less violent or more humanitarian image of the raid and killing since, to the average viewer, there is no actual violence depicted in the image; however, at the same time it allowed for the imagination of violence (that so many Americans longing for revenge may be satisfied with).
Conclusion
This article contributes to the study of image warfare in a new media environment by analyzing three sets of images of enemy capture and death in terms of their potential to support, complicate, and/or undermine key strategic narratives of US administrations. Given the important role of images in international relations and conflict today, leaders must learn to manage the visual realm and ideally to align it with their strategic narratives, whether those be about the wider system, particular issues, identity, or particularly foreign policy goals. Since images have the potential to create shared understandings, they can be important tools in telling a story and making claims about power and its effects, in communicating values and identities, and more. Additionally, visualizing violence and enemy death can add a significant emotional resonance for an audience and powerfully represent and reinforce the verbal narratives put forth by US leadership.
The Bush administration put forth several strategic narratives about the power of the US after 9/11 in the face of ‘terror’, and particularly about the need to pre-empt potential security threats. More specifically, he posited a narrative about the Hussein regime as an evil dictatorship that represented a threat to both the US and the world. The images of the Hussein brothers’ dead bodies and of the capture and medical examination of Saddam Hussein acted as both trophy and humiliation images that reinforced the Bush administration’s issue narratives about regime oppression, death, and illegitimacy. This reading also can support the wider system narrative of American power, hegemony, and victory in Iraq.
Additionally, the Bush administration emphasized the narrative that the US has delivered justice, first in the form of the death of the Hussein sons and then in the form of a fair trial and then execution for Saddam, albeit different notions of ‘justice’ as discussed earlier. The Hussein images could be read to support this justice narrative; however, as this article emphasizes, the images could also complicate and even undermine this justice and rule of law narrative, particularly for those spectators that believed the US was waging an unjust or aggressive war and that trophy or humiliation type images were inappropriate and gruesome. This illustrates the multiple and potentially contested meaning that images can hold vis-à-vis strategic narratives. Political leaders cannot be sure that images they create and disseminate will necessarily reinforce or support their already stated strategic narratives.
The two videos of Saddam Hussein’s execution also illustrate the point about multiple meanings and ambiguity. While some level of ambiguity can help make a narrative strategic in that spectators of different political persuasions can potentially find support for their view, at the same time, if an image or a set of images about one event is too open for interpretation so that it can be read in opposing ways, this may complicate the strategic narratives that elites have been communicating. Thus the silent Hussein execution video could support the administration’s narrative about justice and a more depoliticized fair trial, while the second unofficial video could support a different narrative of sectarian conflict (created or worsened by US intervention) and the US aiming to reveal its power through humiliating an Arab enemy. Nevertheless, all of the violent images of the Hussein family, I argue, can be seen as either trophy or humiliation images that communicate messages that support Bush administration strategic narratives: in short, ‘American military power will respond to those that threaten or attack us, or to those that we believe will attack us.’
In the case of the Obama administration and the Bin Laden killing, the ‘situation room’ photo functions well to support the administration’s strategic narratives about American military power (yet also restraint), about justice, and about resolve against terrorists, all the while doing so without a controversial trophy image of a dead body that could have complicated or undermined the desired message. That is, the image can support the narratives in a more legitimate and innocuous way than actual Bin Laden death images would show. As this article has argued, this stand-in photo can still be read violently and can support a narrative of dominance and power given its aesthetics and details. Nevertheless, the ‘situation room’ photo reinforces a strategic identity narrative about adherence to norms of decency, justice, and human rights. Rhetorically, US exceptionalism and US identity have been tied to human rights and values of justice and equality. In the cases here, there is an attempt to counter the violence of the image with a reference, even if slight, to positive US values and identity. The Obama administration emphasized and succeeded through the absence of Bin Laden death images and the iconic status of the ‘situation room’ photo to highlight this identity and values narrative more than the Bush administration was able to do.
These cases illustrate how – in a new media ecology that includes image warfare – images of violence and war can support, complicate, or undermine strategic narratives by elites. States can to some extent take advantage of new opportunities by creating and disseminating images that they believe may support their own strategic narratives. Images in a complex security environment are subject to multiple interpretations and ambiguity, in addition to competing images, which highlights both the inherent challenges of trying to link images to strategic narratives and the new challenges related to a democratized media where non-state actors are part of image warfare and can undermine those very narratives.
This article makes a contribution to the literature on images and violence, specifically, and political communication more broadly by taking a step to empirically link elite strategic narratives to specific images of enemy violence and death. It has shown that widely disseminated and seen images have great potential to reinforce strategic narratives, but that they also can just as easily complicate and undermine those narratives. Future research would benefit by analyzing the extent to which elites can be or have been effective in harnessing images such as those under review for their particular foreign policy ends. This is challenging to measure, in part due to the nature of image warfare today. Mirzoeff (2005: 14) argues, in his study of the visuality of the Iraq war, that there was a banality of images due to sheer proliferation and saturation of images; this article reveals that some particular images rose to prominence and distinguished themselves from others and could be seen as playing important strategic roles. Even as we remain skeptical of the power of images, this article, through an in-depth analysis of three sets of specific images, has contributed to our knowledge of how unique visual opportunities relate to US strategic narratives. Mirzoeff does remind us that we have much deeper and farther to go to understand the process of visually producing and watching war.
Footnotes
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The author would like to thank The Turnage Family Faculty Innovation and Creativity Fund for the Study of Political Communication at Elon University for supporting this research.