Posted on 01/15/2003 10:09:59 PM PST by victim soul
On February 1, 1969, NBC photographer Eddie Adams happened upon two South Vietnamese soldiers escorting a prisoner through the streets of Saigon. The North Vietnamese were in the midst of their major Tet offensive, nearly overrunning the U.S. Embassy. The prisoner turned out to be a Viet Cong lieutenant responsible for the deaths of countless civilians.
Suddenly and out of nowhere General Nguyen Loan marched directly up to the prisoner. Drawing his revolver, the General placed the barrel on the Viet Cong's temple. Simultaneously, Eddie Adams raised his camera. The pistol fired and a split second later the shudder dropped on Eddie's equipment. The moment in time was trapped forever on the photographer's film.
The black and white still-photo illustrates the cold face of the executioner bracing the recoiling pistol along with the body of a living man being transformed into a corpse; still standing yet falling, still living yet already dead. The projectile penetrated one side of the victim's skull and visibly punched an exit hole on the other, his expression wincing from the percussion.
For right or wrong, the photograph was adopted by the American anti-war movement as a symbol of the excesses of war. The picture was viewed by millions of people and helped to sway the opinion of the nation against the war. Eddie Adams transported every viewer across time and space to a battlefield whose image so enraged the populace that the country was split in half. Never since the Civil War had the country been so divided.
A similar image has emerged today. It portrays an execution in a war nobody cares about. Unlike Viet Nam, politicians avoid the subject; newspapers and other media outlets have loathed covering it. Yet this picture is conveying viewers back in time and across space to a battlefield many have visited but few will admit is really there. This picture is a testimony to an undeclared war and proof of the excesses of our modern culture.
The picture, dated some ten years ago, was not taken on some foreign field of battle, but was snapped in Houston, Texas. The names of the participants are as unknown as the circumstances surrounding the untimely death. Even the photographer has chosen to remain anonymous. Yet the lifeless face of the victim tells the entire story. "Unwanted," "Inconvenient", or "Imperfect" could be the name placed upon the shattered remains. But results could no more be justified than the street shooting of the Viet Cong. The full-color picture displays the last gasp of a decapitated child grasped in an abortionist's cruel surgical tong.
This war is quietly raging in every large city in America. Even the combatants are unusual. Health Care professionals-turned-mercenaries are embarked upon a seek-and-destroy mission against those who cannot possibly defend themselves from such fierce aggression. This war looks more like genocide and the pre-born children are suffering heavy losses. The last thirty years have brought the death toll to nearly 45 million.
Just as a tourniquet can reduce an arterial hemorrhage, this one picture is turning the tide of the war. The medical personnel prosecuting this war are finally being questioned and the rules of engagement are in the process of redefinition. All because of one picture.
This photo has lined the streets across America and has been responsible for women turning away from the "field of battle," the abortion clinics. It has broken and changed the hearts of thousands. This limited display has had a huge impact on the small segment of the American people who have been exposed to it. Now, this one picture of one victim of America's silent, unpopular war needs to be displayed in the mass media market -- no, it demands air-time!
Eddie Adam's graphic photo of that assassinated Viet Cong helped to turn the conscience of America against a political, poorly waged war that was costing thousands of precious American lives. The picture of that unnamed baby can do the same in the Abortion War, yet those who should support such a change, the mainstream pro-life groups, resist the use of the most effective tool in the pro-life arsenal.
Why so much resistance to such proven tactics? It is because abortion has touched nearly every life in one way or another.
Nearly forty percent of all women will have had an abortion by the age of 40. Husbands, boyfriends, family members, best friends, have encouraged, paid for, and driven the get-away car for women seeking abortions.
The pain of guilt runs deep and the scars are not healed. They cannot bear to behold the face of war that they have been so intimate in waging.
The face of war. It has the power to change those who gaze upon it in honest reflection. We, as a nation, must look squarely at the face of abortion, allow ourselves to be changed by it, and own up to our responsibility to stop it, or we will be doomed to remain trapped in the devastation of its bloody quagmire.
Troy Newman has been involved in the pro-life movement for over 12 year and has authored three books on the subject of abortion. He is currently the Director of Operation Rescue West. He can be reached at 316-841-1700 or e-mail: troy@operationrescue.org. http://www.usnewswire.com
Ask the guys who saw their buddies come screaming out of the jungle, bleeding to death, with their genitals cut off by the Viet Cong. Most of them would be perfectly happy to pull the trigger on that Cong sonofabitch right now, right on camera - and they're the ones who have my sympathy.
Time to fire another editor -- that's *"shutter"*.
Too bad for him.
L
The word is "shutter." Cameras have shutters, not "shudders." Sheesh.
I think you're right, but from what I understand the guy was all nads. Saigon was a mess during Tet, the ARVNs did most of the fighting in the inner city and there was a lot of payback on both sides.
Just before he died the peace scum started to give him a bad time, owned a resturant, I think.
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