Iraq War Pictures
My class material reaction for this week is on the picture of American caskets from the class blog site, and the government’s right to censor war images and media in general.
The picture in question shows several rows of caskets loaded on what appears to be a cargo aircraft, maybe a C-130, each of them covered by American flags. American soldiers are scanning over each, making sure that the flags are in place. In my personal opinion, images like this are vital to the American media. Personally, I’ve been against the war in Iraq from the very beginning, and I think that it’s important images like this are shown to the public – that this is the consequence of America going to war. Maybe it will make us think a little harder before blindly giving support to a war with no foundation or purpose. While I admire the fact that our troops have gone to Iraq with the intent to help the people there, I think that our president’s motives are a great deal different than liberating the Iraqis, and I have believed since the Iraqi invasion began that Bush’s professed “War on Terror” is a war that will never be won. Some might argue that these images should not be shown because they are too graphic for the public. But I ask, then, what is your reality? This is real. To not show them would be giving the public a false sense of what the Iraq war, and war in general is really like. This war is the center of a great deal of controversy any way it is approached, but one thing that should not change is whether or not it is portrayed exactly as it is.
