Images of war as propaganda?
Just A Grunt sends us links to a Democratic Underground “discussion” about a Huffington Post article written by Michael Shaw who types while staring at his navel and ruminating about the photos which accompany his article;
…[I]n the aggregate this is a stunning display of American chauvinism given the intimate framing of the war in such a redundantly heroic narrative, all eyes on our warriors as saviors on high.
Just A Grunt reminds us that the three media sources which bring us the pictures in the article are attempts at recreating one of the iconic images that came out of the Vietnam War on the cover of Life magazine;
See how chauvinistic? American military personnel are Americans before they’re anything. They are the kid that used to deliver your morning paper and mow your lawn…they weren’t raised on a soldier farm somewhere. They truly care about each other, they fight in your name, too, but mostly they fight for each other.
They don’t need your asinine pontifications and analysis. Mostly they just need you to shut your fucking mouth for a few minutes while they do the job you don’t have the guts to do. The job you’re quietly glad they do without accepting your own responsibility for the reason they’re there in the first fucking place.
Those hippies should really be afraid of their stupid rhetoric triggering some violence.
Category: Antiwar crowd, I hate hippies
And again, DocBailey, I do not for one second minimize or trivialize what soldiers and medics do. But even if on one level the photos show the most dedicated, selfless people giving their utmost effort in extremely dangerous and challenging conditions, on another level they can be used for other purposes. One aspect doesn’t negate the other.
#51 Joe
I very much wanted to address the post itself, however after I read the last paragraph of #48 by Doc B (thanks for sharing that) and then what you wrote in #51, what I wanted to say and had started to write just flew out the window. I was actually tempted to call you an idiot, but I won’t.
#48 DocBailey:
Honestly sir, I had just stopped tearing up over those photos and you caused me to do it all over again. We can all say “thank you,” but that can never, ever, be enough for what you do.
#51 Joe, There is a great picture of a Wehrmacht Fallschirmjäger caring an MG42. He looks the same as every other soldier in every other battlefield, the only difference is the uniform. There is something that you must grasp Joe, if you are to EVER understand those on this board. Soldiers are the same. Always have been always will be. You pull a soldier from the Legions of Scipio Afrikanas, and put him in say the Big Red One, and the important parts would be the same. It does not matter what caption a person chooses to put there, Combat photography is perhaps some of the most honest photography. It is full of triumph and failure, of victory and defeat, and in the end the photos, as well as the men who are in them, speak for themselves.
also in regards to #50 there is a very old saying. “you can lead a horse to water but can’t force them to drink. it doesn’t matter how many Gee wiz products you make you can not create a need for something. Billy Maze had so many products that didn’t go anywhere, and that’s just for starters. Really Joe, what do you expect? that there are monopoly guys sitting there clicking their heals every day as they come up with some new scheme?
>that is not manipulation or propaganda, that is Humanity at its best.
Thank you Doc…That is true. I feel sorry for Joe who is so cynical. When my husband came home for midtour and needed to unload he didn’t talk about all the “corporations.” He talked about all who they had lost, and all they had saved. He talked about the crash in September that took 5 guys from his unit.
That it black/white to me. Joe lives in the abstract, but these guys are real people.