What a strange thing; it’s the third of May, and I was thinking about one of my favorite paintings. Go ahead and take a moment and just look at it—you can click on it and see a larger version, if you want. Think about it.
Goya’s The Third of May
The painting commemorates an event in history: almost 200 years ago, in 1808, Napoleon’s armies occupied Spain, and the people of Madrid rioted on the second of May. On the third, the troops rounded up people off the street, lined them up, and executed them. These were just ordinary people, peasants and shopkeepers and students, and probably many of them were sympathetic to the rioters and resented the invaders…that is, in the terms of the occupying army, they deserved to be punished brutally. It was among the first in a long series of repressive actions the French took, trying to keep the populace under control.
Look at the people—the affecting strength of the painting is the human responses to imminent, faceless death. There’s horror and shock and fear and confusion and resignation. Then there are the grim, uniformed soldiers committing the slaughter; this is their job, these are the actions they do under orders, orders handed down by ruthless commanders who are certain that a lesson must be taught to the people. This is war, after all.
(For the ahistorical readers: keep in mind that after 6 years of tearing up the country, Napoleon was expelled from Spain, and a year after that, he literally met his Waterloo. And if you needed to be reminded of that, at least remember that these massacred civilians died for a struggle you can’t even be bothered to know about.)
It’s a riveting image. This is what lasts of war—the pain and the grief, the aftermath in which we all say, “What a waste,” when the artists step up and try to show us what it was really all about.
They are building their portfolios right now. Look familiar?
This is not the strange thing, though. Neither the indifference of the warriors nor the pity we feel for their victims is unusual—it stretches over centuries.
It’s just strange that here on the third of May we again have an occupier of a foreign land suggesting that the solution to our difficulties is greater ruthlessness, more indiscriminate killing, deeper disinterest in the human consequences of our actions.
So what do I read here on the morning of the third of May? Glenn Greenwald cites a WSJ editorial that speaks of “moral authority” while advocating greater ferocity.
This is a fact that must be integrated into our public life–absorbed as new history-so that America can once again feel the moral authority to seriously tackle its most profound problems. Then, if we decide to go to war, it can be with enough ferocity to win.
Amanda Marcotte finds a fool who thinks a lethal disinterest is wise.
Which is why there are times when we really should turn off the “smart” bombs and show our seriousness by putting the world on notice that, when we believe the situation calls for it, we are willing to ignore the inevitable bad press and the howls of protest from human rights groups, and exhibit a show of strength and military professionalism that is politically disinterested and tactically thorough and lethal.
Perhaps we’d better start killing all the Goyas in Iraq, too. Two hundred years from now, what will people remember?
This is the Third of May, after all.
Thanks for this great post, PZ, and for introducing me to a wonderful piece of art. I also don’t quite understand the ahistorical among us – history is fascinating, and when you can draw the conclusions between then and now, it makes you a more informed, better citizen. If more people knew about the atrocities and abject failures of European history, perhaps we wouldn’t have to do it all again on this side of the Atlantic.
I’ll be linking to this – get ready for your barely perceptible spike in traffic!
What, if any, is Shelby Steele’s military experience?
Only asking because someone with the least acquaintance with soldiering (or a lick of sense) wouldn’t propose that some problem–any problem–was that we weren’t being sufficiently destructive.
It’s also characteristic (arguably, a defining one) of chickenhawks to be unable to absorb one of the few good things that did come out of Vietnam: Thereafter, US military operations were planned with very specific goals. We went in with everything we needed, did a precise thing and left. What’s called an exit strategy. (Whatever you think of the Granada invasion, it was over by the time you probably heard about it. OTOH, Clinton took a while going to Bosnia because exactly what were we going to do there?) We did not attempt to “wing it.”
Until Dubya–who never did anything but wing it–came in.
I don’t get it. Some windbag columnists call for heavier bombing and this is proof that our military thinks like napolean’s? The right wing columnists are complaining because our military isn’t taking the action they want them to. These aren’t the same people talking here.
The Iraqi prisoner picture immediately struck me for one reason: the prisoner looks like he is being crucified.
What gets me, is that, by February 1944 the British Admiralty intelligence department were already printing textbooks for the use of the people who were going to become members of the Civilian Military Government of what had been Nazi Germany.
That’s right – February 1944 – and D-day wasn’t until June!
In Iraq, “we” had a perfect opportunity in the “first Gulf War” – and threw it away.
This time around, we went in under false pretences, on fake evidence, with no exit strategy, and no idea as to what to do one Bhagdad had fallen.
TYhe US forces in the centre sat arounfd for about a fortnight, before that started to even thnk about civilian control. …
It was different in the British sector, but then we’ve had some practice at this sort of thing – but the US didn’t want to know.
Getting rid of the thoroughly evil Saddam was a good idea, but he methods, and the incompetence, and the cruelty shown are just horrifying.
We arte supposed to be the good guys, remeber? We are supposed to be better than Saddam, but what have we got?
Geo.W. Shrib, Guantanmo, torture …..
There was a wonderful cover on the Brit. magazine “Private Eye” about a year back …
Shrub is talking to Rumsfeld, and the firt’s speech-bubble goes: “People a re being tortured in Iraq”
Rumsfeld’s reply?
“I told you things were getting back to normal”
Ugh.
Paul wrote:
“What a waste,”
Indeed.
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayana (Life of Reason, Reason in Common Sense, Scribner’s, 1905, page 284)
Bullshit.
The implication is that if we remember the past, we can avoid repeating it.
Not so…. we are condemned to repeat it no matter what.
“We are free now, we can kill now,
We can hate now, now we can end the world
We’re not guilty, he was crazy
And it’s been going on for ten thousand years!
Take your place on the great mandala
As it moves through your brief moment of time.
Win or lose now you must choose now
And if you lose you’ve only wasted your life. ”
Here’s some artwork about the present war.. and what it may mean for the future.
Nah, if they are like Goya, despite painting pictures depicting the horrors of the US invasion, they will become model US residents later in life. (Goya retired in France, weirdly enough).
Further proof these people would bankrupt every single one of us alive if they could hurl the last bullet on earth with their bare hands at the effigy of their hatred.
What a sad lot. They don’t learn, they don’t change, they don’t forgive. What use are these people anyhow?
“The implication is that if we remember the past, we can avoid repeating it.
Not so…. we are condemned to repeat it no matter what.”
That only applies to people who do not try to learn from theirs and others’ mistakes or are hopelessly stupid or weak…which, unfortunately, is the majority of people in the world, IMHO.
El sordo certainly could get all the hair on the back of my neck to stand up – that painting and Cronos Devouring His Children both always make me stop and shiver a little.
Good, sobering post, PZ.
Interesting that someone can be at once apalled at human suffering and death yet have no qualms about inflicting the same on large numbers of members of other species.
G. Tingey, the US had set up a training school for military government in 1943. I’ve heard, not well sourced, that the group was moved to England in 1944, so as to be ready if the government of Germany collapsed.
It’s incredible, when compared to the Bush administration’s handling of the Iraq War. That war was a ‘go’ from Sep 12, 2001, and they *still* handled it like it was a improv comedy performance.
Which species? I don’t even notice when I slaughter E. coli, I’m casual about rending soybeans and wheat and corn, I’ll slake my thirst on the juices of barley, and I’ll chomp on carrots for the sheer pleasure of it. I do have qualms about killing mice, and I really disliked euthanizing cats, but I’ll do it when necessary. I’m very protective of human life.
Funny, isn’t it, how our concern scales with the proximity of the species to our own.
I lost more than a few hours in the Prado staring at various Goyas when I was in Madrid a couple summers back. I remember having to hike up into a small room to see this painting, but it was definitely worth the stairs; thanks for reminding us of this great painting.
(I brought home a print of Cronos Devouring His Children but my wife finds it to be too horrifying to hang up, sadly.)
The Iraqi prisoner picture immediately struck me for one reason: the prisoner looks like he is being crucified.
Bingo: my reaction exactly. What we need is for some artist to do a piece based on that, playing up the Crucifixion angle, to shock Christian America into a realization of what it is doing.
As for the “kill-em-all” wing-nuts:
I’d like to think that we (I mean the West in general) have progressed since Napoleon. Nowadays, these sorts of atrocities tend to be committed by rogue field officers, who end up being censured by their higher-ups (think: My Lai). I won’t say we’re perfect by a long shot, and I’m sure there are lots of exceptions where people get away with mass murder — but maybe we’re better than we were. If our civilization is indeed “superior” to some others, surely this is one of the aspects that make it so. Ironically, these people want to throw away the values that supposedly make us “better” — in the name of defending it.
PZ, my son and I were playing golf. We noticed my wife’s car approaching and ran over to see what was wrong. My wife said that my son’s wife’s grandmother had died. After my wife left we continued with out golf. I mentioned to my son,” I’m glad it wasn’t our dog, we would have had to quit and go home.
I had seen that painting before, but I didn’t know the name.
Great. I share my birthday with the memory of violence. Brilliant. Happy birthday to me.
Have a look at, if you get the chance, Robert Hughes’s recent biography of Goya. He was a surprising character living in turbulent times.
That’s one of my favorites and John’s too; the use of the word “favorite” is subversive in itself. (Standard reaction: “How can you call Goya your favorite? Don’t you like nice art instead?” etc.) Guernica by Picasso is another favorite of mine; of course, it was curtained off when Colin Powell visited the U.N. in the run-up to the Iraq War.
I remember an Iraqi civilian being interviewed who said that she thought that the iconic photo of the prisoner with the hood on his head and the wires attached to his fingers looked like a crucifixion (after all, Muslims include Jesus in their list of prophets). I think the shocking parallel is obvious to Christian America if anyone cares to look at it. You can lead a horse to water…
When I was in Spain years ago the Prado had a display of Goya’s “Black Period” (you know drowning dogs, evil crones, and Cronos devouring his own offspring all in dark colors). But they also had his early stuff (smiling portraits of the royal family, dancing peasants, etc all in bright colors). It was interesting to watch how his style changed over time and to see the pivotal effect that the French occupation had on him.
I just finished reading Poul Anderson’s “A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows”. In it there is a line that is very appropriate. “Besides … the device every conqueror, yes, every altruistic liberator should be required to wear on his shield … is a little girl and her kitten, at ground zero.” The ellipses are in the original.
Goya didn’t retire to France until 1824, well after Napoleon was defeated and dead, and a regime less slaughterous was established.
Also I’d note with irony that the “artist” behind the iconic Abu Ghraib picture above was one of the torturers.
It’s amazing how relevant I have found Goya lately – it was a little jarring if not terribly depressing to find PZ here blogging on this Goya painting here on the 3rd of May. I had “The Colossus” up on my door right after the planes flew into the WTC and the Pentagon. I knew at that time that something ferociously stupid was going to happen…and as far as I can tell it has…
May 3, 2006, is also Pete Seeger’s 87th birthday. Pete has on his banjo this statement, painted around the drum head: “This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender.”
Pete borrowed the line from what his old friend Woody Guthrie had painted on his guitar.
Peace has a chance. Remembering history is a key part of it. Working for it is another part of it.
Thanks for the post, PZ. Remembering past horrors may keep us from new ones, especially when we regard them as horrors, as you noted.
PZ, what’s the source of the last pic? Just curious.
Great pic, thoughtful post. The Peninsular War (Wellington plus local resistance evicting Napoleon from occupied Portugal and Spain) is well worth a read in fact and in fiction (eg Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe books). Wellington initially got spanked, withdrew behind defensive fortifications in Portugal and from there mounted a counterattack and drove Napoleon out of first Portugal and then Spain. Had he failed, Europe would might have been a very different place now. When the knock-ons for world history would have been it’s hard to tell at this range. 3 May shows the horror of the civilian reprisal by military forces: Europe is full of monuments to executed resistance fighters or civilians murdered in reprisal. However in the Peninsular War, the locals had a rough way of dealing with captured soldiers: sawing. Upend captive (to keep brain perfused with blood) fetch large wood saw from shed, start sawing at groin.
Ed Darrell wrote:
“Pete borrowed the line from what his old friend Woody Guthrie had painted on his guitar.”
Woody’s actual inscription was “This Machine Kills Fascists”
I like that better.
Paul wrote:
“Which species? I don’t even notice when I slaughter E. coli, I’m casual about rending soybeans and wheat and corn, I’ll slake my thirst on the juices of barley, and I’ll chomp on carrots for the sheer pleasure of it.”
From “The Mysterious Stranger” by Mark Twain:
“We others are still ignorant of sin; we are not able to commit it; we are without blemish, and shall abide in that estate always. We – ” Two of the little workmen were quarreling, and in buzzing little bumblebee voices they were cursing and swearing at each other; now came blows and blood; then they locked themselves together in a life-and-death struggle. Satan reached out his hand and crushed the life out of them with his fingers, threw them away, wiped the red from his fingers on his handkerchief, and went on talking where he had left off: “We cannot do wrong; neither have we any disposition to do it, for we do not know what it is.”
If you have never read this incredible story, look HERE:
http://www.shsu.edu/~eng_wpf/authors/Twain/Mysterious-Stranger.htm
Goya also produced a horrifying series of etchings, “The Disasters of War”, which make “The Third of May 1808” look like a Norman Rockwell painting. They are online at
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Los_Desatres_de_la_Guerra. Among other things is a graphic illustration of what “lunartalks” describes above.
The French armies in Spain regarded themselves as “liberators” – and not without some justification, for the contemporary Spanish monarchy was cruel, corrupt, and incompetent. Nevertheless the Spanish citizens preferred their own despots to those imposed by foreign armies. This is a recurring theme in history. There have been cases, such as Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge or Uganda under Idi Amin, where the local regime was so horrible that a foreign invasion was welcomed, but they are the exception.
It is worthy of note in this historical context, that the Spanish Ulcer, as Napoleon’s Peninsular War was known, gave the world the term ‘guerilla.’ And the whole thing was caused by Napoleon’s disinterest in the good will of the population and the approval of the Church–things which he had managed reasonably well in other conquests. Escalation and reprisal meant that in a few years, French troops could not move in less than company strength. And it ended when the French got pushed out of Spain.
In 1914, germany made the specific policy choice to have a brutal occupation in France and Belgium–frightfulness, they called it. It was a policy that ensured that neutrals were neutral against Germany for the entire war. The US was full of German-Americans, but once the policy of atrocity became public knowledge, there was no longer any support for Germany.
Steve “Yes, gross simplifications” James
beautiful post. that painting is riveting. the photos and the tie-ins to what is going on in iraq is well done. thanks pz. i’ve passed this around to others lately. . .
The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honor. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiqués are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows … We are today not far from a disaster.
— T.E. Lawrence (a.k.a. Lawrence of Arabia), The Sunday Times, August 1920
Though-provoking the post may be, but i find it oversimplifying the concepts at play to the point of inaccuracy and thats worrying. There’s no excuse for saying people who have been court-marshalled and jailed for abusing prisoners were in fact following orders and doing their job as dictated by the administration. That kind of false association is what loses us any traction in protesting the war.
There’s a simple question that was asked at Goldstein’s blog which shows the stupidity of this idea (without even addressing the moral failure).
How many US cities would Al Qaeda need to attck to get the Americans to roll over and agree to do what they wanted?
deskmerc:
The picture comes from one of the most distressing stories to have emerged from this insane war.
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/ny-wocheck0120,0,532599.story?coll=ny-world-big-pix
The pictures in the photo gallery are unbearably disturbing. A year after seeing it, PZ’s picture brought back the whole thing to me.
Mr. Wagner, at some point Woody expanded his guitar-sticker to include hate from all quarters. Folksingers are a lot like the political cartoonists Boss Tweed complained about. Their messages are brief, but longer lasting and closer to the truth.
P Z Myers wrote
In the last century, the news agencies of the communist regimes pumped out a relentless stream of good news stories about what was happening behind the Iron Curtain. Some of them were even true. But, true or not, they were dismissed as propaganda because they told only one side of the story.
The photographs taken in Abu Ghraib jail of the despicable and abusive treatment of prisoners by some guards deserved the widest possible circulation. The people responsible deserved to be prosecuted.
So do the so-called insurgents who murder Iraqi civilians on a daily basis. But where are the posts linking to pictures of people stabbed, beheaded, shot or blown apart by the terrorists?
By all means bewail the waste, suffering and death caused by war but if you only concentrate on that caused by one side then what you are doing is peddling propaganda not revealing truth.
By all means bewail the waste, suffering and death caused by war but if you only concentrate on that caused by one side then what you are doing is peddling propaganda not revealing truth.
It depends on what your question is. If its scope is limited to the waste, suffering, and death caused by war, then you are correct that the information from both sides are relevant.
If you are examining the evidence to see whether it matches one side’s claim of being qualitatively better than the other, then it is perfectly legitimate and appropriate to concentrate on what suffering is caused by that one side, and how well it matches with their claims. Examination of that question is not propaganda at all.
If you are examining the evidence to see whether it matches one side’s claim of being qualitatively better than the other..
Nobody was killed in those Abu Ghraib pictures, were they? So compared against being stabbed, beheaded, shot or blown apart; I think we are qualitatively better. We were going for humiliation. Why do you think the pictures were released?
Nobody was killed in those Abu Ghraib pictures, were they?
I don’t know. 108 detainees have died in US custody. Some were natural causes, some were ruled justifiable homicides. However, more than 20 have been or are being investigated as criminal homicide or abuse by US military personnel. I don’t have any way of knowing if any of those cases involved anyone in the Abu Ghraib pictures or not.
So compared against being stabbed, beheaded, shot or blown apart; I think we are qualitatively better.
If that’s your standard of behavior for comparison, then your statement is correct. I was comparing it against the standard of right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, so we’re speaking past each other again.
We were going for humiliation.
If our behavior’s not even making any pretense of going for moral anymore, do you think it’s at least effective? I think we’ve squandered any moral standing we had for a bowl of porridge, myself, in terms of the results it’s had in casualities, and in progress of rebuilding.
Why do you think the pictures were released?
I don’t remember the circumstances; I think they were leaked.
If the pictures were released because we were going for humiliation and we wanted to send a message or whatever, it really undermines that message to jail the prison guards responsible. Every society has its criminals and we do our best to jail them. Well, the military has its criminals too and they brig them. Prisoner abuse is not in the plan.
P Z Myers
As a personal survival strategy, it makes sense to prefer ‘us’ to ‘them’, I suppose. We stick with our own. Understanding and concern for our fellows is advantageous for a social species but having qualms about the suffering and death of members of other species doesn’t really help us at all.
And between our immune systems and antibiotics, each of us can kill millions of bacteria each day. Even if we were aware of it, we wouldn’t give it a second thought. After all, some of them are harmful and, besides, there are uncounted billions more where they came from. It’s the same with insect pests. Most of us shudder at the thought of a cockroach infestation and are more than happy to have them mercilessly eradicated. Their suffering – assuming they feel any – and deaths are irrelevant. It’s us or them.
We slaughter animals – and plants, come to that – in their billions for food. We sacrifice millions of other creatures in the interests of scientific research. If the suffering and deaths of thousands of animals leads to treatments that will save millions of human lives somewhere down the line, what’s the problem with that?. After all, human lives – ‘us’ – are more important than other animals – ‘them’.
And why are we more important than the others? Well, lacking any other justification, it’s because we say so, isn’t it?
The trouble is, if we can apply that principle to inter-species conflicts of interest why shouldn’t we do the same for intra-species conflicts. What’s wrong with preferring ‘us’ – or even the US – over ‘them’? Why should there be all this hand-wringing, breast-beating anguish over the deaths of a few tens of thousands of Iraqis, for example? There are around 6 billion human beings on Earth and, according to Professor Pianka, that’s more than the planet can bear so a few less must be all to the good.
Isn’t that right?
Moreover, there’s another issue that justifies bringing up this side rather than both – to draw attention to the fact that these are people who should answer to American citizens.
Moreover, there’s another issue that justifies bringing up this side rather than both – to draw attention to the fact that these are people who should answer to American citizens.
The Iraqi insurgents are the ones who think like Napoleon! Not US!