What You Don't Know About This Photograph Has the Power To Change Opinions

[davester]

That is an important picture for sure, but I don't think that it misled the american public. The Vietnam war was presented to us on television in a highly sanitized way, so if anything we didn't think much about the gruesome violence that was happening every day out there, far from our television screens. Not to mention that body count data had been censored because it was too incendiary. The american public was shielded from the true awfulness of war by the Pentagon propaganda machine. This photo showed war for what it truly was, brutal, violent, and without due process. This photo woke up the american public to the fact that their tax dollars were going to a brutal, violent, unjust conflict, so the photographer did a great service to America. I'm sorry that the shooter was vilified, but I'm certainly not sorry that the photo was published. lIf not for that photo the war would probably continued far longer and countless more american and vietnamese lives would have been sacrificed.