Leading Photos: Superior Fighting Machine

This lead photo from Monday’s New York Times has been on my mind for a few days now. The caption reads:

Sgt. Luke Wilson, who lost a leg in Iraq, walks with a device known as a C-leg while technicians use a computer to monitor it at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The center has fitted 100 soldiers with artificial arms and legs, including state-of-the-art devices unavailable to the public.

If you’ve been following my blog, you know that I’m interested in the political subtexts and unstated messages of these kinds of photos. Typically, I like to suggest a few possible readings:

a.) Gulf War II: No sacrifice required.

b.) There’s nothing America can’t fix if we just throw some technology at it.

c.) The American army is a superior fighting machine.

d.) If we don’t want to know about the dead, we certainly don’t want to know about the injured.

(image: nytimes.com)