"Imagine if every week a televised roll call memorialized Iraq's civilian casualties with individual portraits. If this were possible, we would witness, in full, the staggering human costs of Iraq's occupation on a personal level. The politics of history dictate who is remembered and who is not, and most countries prefer to honor only their own dead. Perhaps, if we were confronted with those we've killed, face-by-face, we could better question the notion of 'us and them' and address the abstraction of death that skews our understanding of war."
Read more of Caroline E. Winter's Witness column at AdBusters. Winter takes as her point of departure the recent release of stills taken of Khmer Rouge victims at the notorious Tuol Sleng prison where an estimated 1.7 million people were tortured and killed between 1975 and 1979. The images, taken by Nhem Ein, are now housed at the Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocide.