This is going down through the ages, simply due to the power of the images
Something much more than that is going on, CB. In every war since cameras were invented, there are soldiers who have taken trophy shots of enemy dead. Heck, sometimes they took more than photos, they sent body parts home as souvenirs. There is a picture in Life from 1944 of some Marine's sweetheart, a lovely, wholesome girl by the look of her, contemplating a Jap skull he had sent her.
What has changed is the way it is regarded. Now, it is shameful. No, shameful is not strong enough. Now, it is supposed to be cripplingly shameful - but only for us. Al Qaeda or Sadr's guys have no such rules. In fact, they have no rules at all. They triumph in abuse and head-hacking and blowing up innocent civilians. This is accepted as though it were some new law of nature. They are not even called a bad name for it; they are "militants" and "insurgents".
Thus does reporting become a powerful weapon of war. It always was, but in previous wars, the newspapers could be counted on to fight for their own countries. |
