"Questions" and Moral Equivalence

During the Israeli invasion into Lebannon, several bloggers discovered that the news agency, Reuters, was photoshopping photos. Clearly, the intent with the photoshopped image was to convey more destruction (in this case, more burning fires as the result of Israeli airstrikes in a dense residential area), which has the effect of influencing opinion against the Israeli. Regardless politcal bent, I believe a fair assumption is that most rational, moral people don't like watching civilian buildings burning. The target audience for these photos are the people within a Democratic society that say, "I don't like Hezbollah, but indescriminate bombing against civilian targets isn't something I can support."

Photoshopped images might be the work of a Western backed news service who serves the interests of Islamists--most likely not in an active capacity--but the Islamists themselves also have tactics they've used to influence Western opinion. In Iraq, Powerline analyzes a situation where insurgents "allow" western photographers to take pictures of them in action. While this might on its face look as if an "objective" cameraman is just taking pictures of the "other side" during a conflict, the insurgents "allow" the cameramen to photograph them in order to project fear, resolve and ruthlessness to the intended audience.

World or domestic opinion isn't very important to the Islamists, because they do not operate within a democratic framework where opinion matters. What matters to them is who has the biggest gun and isn't afraid to use it. But they understand that the West does, and they work to manipulate the Western media with the hopes of changing the opinion of it citizens, who then put pressure on their leaders to pull back. The secondary effect that the Islamists want to cause is a portrait of inevitability to the subjects they eventually want to rule. Why should an average citizen in Iraq help the "occupiers" when as soon as they leave, the Islamists will wipeout the collaborators?

This is information war. Militarily the Islamists cannot even hope for a tactical stalemate against a force that is superior in everyway (training, equipment, tactics and even ideology), however they work very carefully to portray the face of the victim who is determined not to cower as the "big bully" attempts to pulverize them, regardless of the actual reality of who they are and what their situation is.

Unfortunately for the West, the Islamists have exposed a very weak point of moral equivalence within our society. It is absurd to to assume that many in the West actually agree with the ideology that the Islamists are fighting for, but many believe the equation has switched from "totalitarian, ideology bent on forced expansion through brutally, violent and suppressive means," to "underdog taking on the chin from Buddy Revell." The desired result of the West running in circles fighting against itself and not against the real enemy clearly serves the strategic goals of Islamists.

This lead-in brings me to the latest example of just how effectively moral equivalence has neutralized the West. As Reuters and the NY Times have be caught as pawns working both indirectly and directly for the cause of the Islamists, today the "question" has been raised about how American interests have been served through the manipulation of images as well:

Staged War Photos? Even 'Iwo Jima' Shot Faced Charges

The phenomenon of questioning war photos that seem too good to be true goes back long before the birth of blogs and the current controversy over pictures from Lebanon. It has even swirled around one of the most famous and honored war photos ever: the flag-raising at Iwo Jima during World War II captured by The Associated Press's Joe Rosenthal, who died yesterday.

Every few years, until recently, reports and rumors appeared that questioned the photo with some of the same charges heard today, concerning "staging." They were fueled by the fact that a smaller flag had been raised nearby earlier that day on Iwo Jima, captured by a different photographer but rarely seen.

But as with most of the allegations today, the theories about the Rosenthal photo were based on flimsy evidence or speculation.

The man most responsible for spreading the story that the picture was staged, the late Time-Life correspondent Robert Sherrod, long ago admitted he was wrong. Columnist Jack Anderson also raised questions, then retracted them. But the rumor persisted.

In 1991, a New York Times book reviewer, exploring a book on the flag-raising called "Iwo Jima: Monuments, Memories and the American Hero," went so far as to suggest that the Pulitzer Prize committee consider revoking Rosenthal's 1945 award for photography. That Harvard University book detailed the earlier flag-raising and the Marines' top brass desire to promote the second one. Debate raged about whether the Marines "staged" the second, more stirring, picture.

At late as the mid-1990s, Jack Anderson promised readers "the real story" of the Iwo Jima photo: that Rosenthal had "accompanied a handpicked group of men for a staged flag raising hours after the original event." Anderson later retracted his story.

Read the whole article for the particulars, which although there are "charges" of manipulation, are far from conclusive, but for the sake of the rest of the post, let's assume are true. Let's assume that Rosenthal couldn't get a good image, and got a few Marines to simulate raising the American flag in victory. Why would this "staged" situation be completely different from the examples I listed above.

The United States had been at war for three years, and as they were mopping up a fierce campaign that had taken them through events such as D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge, they were still a few months away from Hitler's suicide and the collapse of the German Army. In context with this, the images coming from the Pacific of an even more determined enemy had to wear on the mind of a country trying to find a solution for victory. The Battle of Iwo Jima had 30,000 Marines surround and attack the Japanese position. Of the 22,000 Japanese on the island, only a thousand survived.

The image of the Americans planting a flag on the top of mountain of this island demonstrated something greater: American superiority of determination and strength over an enemy that was supposed to be of superior determination. We had demonstrated to our people at home and to the Japanese that if we had to kill every last one of them in order to plant our flag at the top of each hill they occupied, we would do so, regardless of the cost.

So, even if Rosenthal had lined up a bunch of Marines and asked them to plant the flag again, it still doesn't matter. Rosenthal did not deviate or spin the truth; he beautifully captured the reality at the conclusion of a pivotal point in war: victorious Americans taking an island against an entrenched and fiercely determined opponent.

Those who "question" the legitimacy of Rosenthal's photograph--versus what the Islamists and ideologically driven news agencies who are trying to manipulate the narrative of the current war for the greater good--have provided the world a textbook example of moral equivalence.