"The right picture can win or lose the damn war..."

I just watched “Flags of Our Fathers”, the new Clint Eastwood movie, which is a true-life account of the impact, fallout, and controversy surrounding that famous photo of the raising of the American flag on top of Mount Suribachi on the island of Iwo Jima during WWII.

The movie was excellent, as is anything Clint Eastwood is involved in. The gist of the story is this, in the simplest of terms:

On the fifth day of the Battle of Iwo Jima, which raged on for 40 days, a small platoon of soldiers planted the flag atop a hard-won Mount Suribachi. Photographers Lou Lowery and Bob Campbell accompanied them but took no photos of the actual raising of the original flag. A visiting secretary of the Navy whimsically demanded the first flag as a personal war souvenir. Thus, a second platoon was sent of the mountain to trade the original flag with a new, much larger one.


Original flag raising (Lowery)
<------------- Flag exchange (Campbell) ------------>


The photographer with the second platoon was Joe Rosenthal, his staged photo is the infamous one at the top of the post. This historic photograph was posed, and by the time it was sent around the world, many of the men involved were already dead. Those who survived were shipped home for some useful flag waving and morale boosting and, as seems to be the case with heroes of war, treated ultimately appallingly.

The war back home wasn’t going too well. Support for the war was almost nil, as was the money needed to continue it (sound familiar?). When Rosenthal’s staged photo was sent back to the states, it graced every front page and magazine cover. Editors of US Camera Magazine said, "In that moment, Rosenthal's camera recorded the soul of a nation." Except that it had recorded a lie.

The powers that be saw this as a fantastic opportunity to use the three surviving soldiers in a propaganda tour to raise money for war bonds. None felt much like a hero, and all regarded the flag-raising incident, which had made them famous, as little more than a farce.

Back home, the three survivors were expected to reproduce the scene again and again in increasingly ludicrous ways, all in a drive to sell war bonds and prevent a US retreat from the Pacific region.

It would almost suggest that the packaging of a war is half the battle. And that is the point of this post. Propaganda and packaging, sometimes subtle, sometimes so obvious you think they have to be kidding.



Look familiar? I realize this photo wasn't staged, but it has certainly been used enough to stir up American emotions. Funny, the people who have used this photo are the same people who now have nothing but contempt for these men.
















Barely one month into the war and George declares victory. That was 3 ½ years ago. But damn, didn't we feel superior!










How about these photos? Bush banned news coverage and photography of dead soldiers' homecomings on all military bases, something about their military actions losing support once the public glimpsed the remains of U.S. soldiers arriving at air bases in flag-draped caskets. The woman who took these pictures, Tami Silcio, was fired shortly after they hit the mainstream media.







Anyone remember Jessica Lynch? She was the little American Darling of the war, who was captured, tortured, stabbed, and shot before she was heroically rescued. Only problem was, she wasn’t tortured, stabbed, shot, OR heroically rescued. You can refresh your memory of this poorly written piece of propaganda here.






And then there’s Pat Tillman, the Arizona State lineman, “who died heroically in a fierce battle in Iraq”. Tillman’s death came at a sensitive time for the Bush administration, just a week before the Army’s abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in Iraq became public and sparked a huge scandal. The Pentagon immediately announced that Tillman had died heroically in combat with the enemy, and President Bush hailed him as “an inspiration on and off the football field, as with all who made the ultimate sacrifice in the war on terror.”

The Whitehouse waved Tillman’s corpse around like it was the American flag itself, right up until the time it was discovered that Tillman was killed by his own platoon in a fit of “misidentification”. Not until five weeks later, as Tillman’s battalion was returning home, did officials inform the public and the Tillman family that he had been killed by his fellow soldiers. His mother, Mary Tillman, is still trying to get the truth from the Pentagon concerning the circumstances of her son's death. And they are still stonewalling.

And then there’s Abu Ghraib itself, perhaps the biggest cause of the public’s change of heart towards the war. I needn’t bother posting pictures of the torturing of Iraqi prisoners; we’ve all seen them a million times. It was shortly after those photos became public that America began to lose its taste for this war.

Maybe there is a bit of truth to the saying. Perhaps the right picture can win or lose the damn war...

So question every photograph. Not only the content of the picture, but the reason behind the use of it. There is always an ulterior motive, which is to stir your emotions and sway your opinions.

And if you ever find yourself running low on political propaganda, you can always check out Bag News Notes. No one can disassemble a photograph quite like Dr. Shaw. His visual interpretation of political images is amazing.