As long as we don't see it, we can pretend it doesn't exists.
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"Relax, we got this"[/big]
Nick was 16 years old when his brother got killed in vietnam.
On October 10, 1965, Huỳnh Thanh, Nicks older brother, was photographing a battle in the Mekong Delta when he was caught in fighting and got shot and killed.
He was 27.
After his death, the Associated Press hired
Nick , his little brother, who was only 16 as an apprentice photographer. Nick later said it was his brother's death that influenced him to continued his work as a war photographer.
On June of 1972, South Vietnamese aircrafts, using Napalm, attacked what they thought were enemy positions. One of the strikes hit a group of civilians who were hiding at a nearby village.
Nick was with a group of journalists near the road when he watched as civilians and soldiers ran from the attack.
He aimed his camera to the fleeing children, and that's when he captured the now famous image of little 9 years old Kim Phúc.
Kim was heavily burned by napalm and was in the front when Nick took her picture.
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After taking the photo, he dropped the camera and started helping the victims, not knowing the impact that one photo was going to have on perception of the Vietnam war in the United States
He poured water on Kim Phúc and took her to a hospital.
Impact of the photo on the Vietnam War.
The photo, which Nick titled , Terror of War or as it's known, Napalm Girl had a huge impact on the way Americans looked at the War in Vietnam.
It made people aware of the real consequences of war especially the suffering of civilians and children. Regular Americans who had only thought of the war in terms of soldiers and battles saw a different side of the conflict.
The image became a powerful symbol for Anti-war groups who used it to argue that the conflict was causing unacceptable harm to the people of Vietnam.
Photojournalists became seen as important witnesses who could challenge what the government was saying to Americans thru official channels.
Broadcast stations and The government itself realized then, how a single image could influence how the American people understood and felt about any conflict then and in the future.
After the Vietnam war, Tv stations and the access of photojournalists during combat became highly restricted.
Today, any images of war casualties on you tube and tik tok get either clouded or deleted altogether with an added very stern warning.
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Yesterday, The administration released footage of the US hitting targets in "Heavy wave' of strikes against Iran.
The showed Airplanes getting hit and a truck getting blown to pieces. Reading the comments here on SW, there were many about how stupid to use all that power to blow up a truck..or about how the war was going.. or if that's going to actually make a noticeable impact.
But there were no comments about the poor bastard driving the truck. Or the kids that got bombed at that one school.
Watching that video I myself can't help but to think, how bad csn it be? They're only blowing up things and parked airplanes and trucks!!
And that's something they have learned from Vietnam.
One of the clearest examples of a leader emphasizing the importance of visual evidence and how it can shape public perception can be attributed to Eisenhower, when after seeing Nazi concentration camps, at the end of World War II, said:
“Get it all on record now—get the films—get the witnesses—because somewhere down the road of history some bastard will get up and say that this never happened.”
As long as we don't see ugly photos of the real suffering perpetuated on the civilian people, they can make us believe whatever they want us to believe.
And we would.
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Kim 50 years later.
