The war on camera

Caroline B. Glick writes about the situation in Fallujah where the Marine killed the terrorist/murder lying on the floor in the mosque. She details how difficult the war is in the face of so much journalistic antagonism: "Add to this the fact that terrorists eagerly exploit universally recognized symbols of non-combatants and you have a war that you simply cannot justify on camera." Many Americans seem to forget that war is hell, and that few lovely pictures will come out of the grisly battlefields. They also forget about the power and influnence the media can have with a few out-of-context images. As William Randolph Hearst once supposedly said, "You give me the pictures, and I will give you the war." It is such a challenge to establish the proper context for these images we are seeing. I don't think many journalists are going to take the time to establish it either. Many of them have an ideological agenda that is going to distort their objectivity. Let me say that there is no such creature as a completely objective journalist. They are as rare as an eighty year old gymnast. We as Americans need to understand the horrific nature of war, and that a dead terrorist is far more desirable than a dead American soldier.