A Vietnam War Vet Looks at 'THE' Iraq War Photo - (U.S.Army Major Mark Bieger holding child)

CHRONWATCH.COM ^ | MAY 9, 2005 | WAYNE LUSVARDI

[CHARLITE]

The recent photo of U.S. Army Major Mark Bieger cradling a wounded Iraqi girl in his arms is one of those indelible images that puncture the often impenetrable fog of the war at the geo-strategic level. (For the story of the photo click here http://komotv.com/news/story.asp?ID=36687). This powerful photo contrasts with the negative media portrayals riveted into our minds about the Viet Nam War.

One memorable Viet Nam war photo is the picture of children fleeing down a road from where a napalm bomb was dropped by the South Vietnamese Air Force on the village of Trang Bang where Viet Cong were holed up. One 9-year old girl, Kim Phoe Phan Thi, is shown crying and naked after shedding her burning clothes running away from the searing heat and clouds of smoke from the bomb. The picture does not tell the full story that nearby South Vietnamese ARVN soldiers were unable to aid or cover the little girl’s nakedness because of the unseen burns on her back.http://www.vietnamwar.com/PhanThiKimPhuc.htm

Another remarkable but eerie photo is of the black silhouette of a helicopter hovering directly overhead against the background of an all white sky hoisting the body of an American paratrooper killed in action in the jungle near the Cambodian border in War Zone C, circa 1966..http://www.pieceuniquegallery.com/huet/HH6612_page.html

The above photo is reminiscent of this writer’s own experience of escorting medicated psychiatric patients in Huey helicopters so they wouldn’t fall or jump from the aircraft during evacuations from the 25th Infantry Division Headquarters base camp in Cu Chi to the hospital in Ton Son Nhut near Saigon; as pictured in Eric M. Bergerud’s book Red Thunder, Tropic Lightning- The World of a Combat Division in Vietnam. On the return trips from such evacuations we would fly into fire fights and pick up captured Viet Cong who were sometimes mutilated by South Vietnamese forces, something that U.S. forces never condoned and would have severely punished.

These pictures, and the infamous story of a retaliatory action against Viet Cong collaborators in the village of My Lai and the ensuing court martial of U.S. Army Lieutenant William Calley, are the media images that often come to mind about the Viet Nam War.

However, an almost identical photograph to the Major Bieger photo of a U.S. soldier cradling a Vietnamese child during the Viet Nam War can be found on pages 112-113 of the new book Under Fire: Images from Vietnam edited by war reporter Catherine Leroy (no online photo). Another nearly as powerful photo is of a U.S. Marine rescuing an elderly Vietnamese lady during the Battle of Hue in February 1968 by photographer Don McCullin.http://www.pieceuniquegallery.com/mccullin/DM6804_page.html A selection of the portfolio of photographic images from Under Fire can be viewed by clicking here.http://www.pieceuniquegallery.com/leroy/cl_gallery.html

In the eyes of many, the Viet Nam war was an “unnecessary” war, while the Iraq War is seen more as a “war for democracy.” But is this public perception accurate? The Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote that “thought is impossible without images.” Have the images changed that much between the two wars?

While the public often depends on TV pictures framed by broadcast commentators to understand the reality of war, three books ironically by liberal writers may offer a better picture of the Viet Nam war in retrospect.

Peter Braestrap, Chief of the Washington Post’s Saigon Bureau during the Tet Offensive documented the press’s abject failure to get the story of the Viet Nam war right in his book Big Story: How the American Press and TV Reported and Interpreted the Crisis of Tet 1968. Braestrup documented how television’s misportrayal of the Tet Offensive as a “disaster,” especially by CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite, galvanized American public opinion against the war. There are no pictures in Braestrap’s book but it is chocked with word pictures of the media-casting of the Tet Offensive.

Edith Efron, former TV Guide writer, and lawyer-sociologist Clytia M. Chambers, definitively documented in The News Twisters (1971), with some statistical graphs that are as riveting as any photo, on how the news media biased the American public against Richard Nixon in the 1968 Presidential election and against U.S. policy on the war in Vietnam. Efron’s book focused on NBC broadcaster David Brinkley’s definition of news: “News is what I say it is. It’s something worth knowing by my standards.”

Truong Nhu Tang, a former South Vietnamese Minister of Justice, revolutionist and collaborator with Ho Chi Minh, was a double agent for the National Liberation Front (NLF) who wrote A Viet Cong Memoir: An Inside Account of the Vietnam War and its Aftermath (1985). The book is filled with photographs of NLF activities and the story of the tragic betrayal of the NLF by the communists after the fall of South Vietnam. Disillusionment and despair came after the war when instead of liberation from “colonialism” the North Vietnamese arrested 300,000 people and put many in permanent “re-education camps” that mass media never saw. Tang ended up fleeing as one of the “boat people” refugees after the war.

Does the public view the pictures of the Iraq War through a different cultural and media lens than the Vietnam War? Certainly the circumstances of the two wars are different. But perhaps the public should go back and look at the photographs of the Vietnam War for themselves and come to their own conclusions upon the 30th anniversary of the last Americans being airlifted out of Saigon ending the U.S. involvement in that war.

Note: The writer served with the 25th Medical Battalion, 25th Infantry Division, U.S. Army, based at Division Field Headquarters in Cu Chi, Hau Nghia Province, South Vietnam, during the Vietnam War.

About the Writer: About the author: Wayne Lusvardi worked for 20 years for the Metro Water District of So. Cal. and lives in Pasadena. The views expressed are his own. . Wayne receives e-mail at wlusvardi@yahoo.com.

[Calpernia]

You mean photos other than the links in this posted story?

Which war are you looking for?

[orionblamblam]

> That's a good way to look at it. :)

Which is a bit of surprise coming from me, given what an unpleasant, grouchy bastard I am. I do, however, have a soft spot for Viet Nam vets, due to my father being one.