What is a war casualty? The answer appears painfully obvious. It asserts itself not through argument but, more viscerally, through photographs: a torso shredded by a road-side bomb; a bloodied peasant spread-eagled in a ditch; a soldier (cigarette dangling nonchalantly) smashing his boot into a dead woman’s head.
Author: Rob Nixon, the Rachel Carson Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He is working on a book on the environmental and epidemiological aftermaths of high-tech wars.