As mentioned earlier in The Conservative Post, Michelle Malkin has linked to Michael Yon’s article where he calls left wing zealot Michael Moore out on the illegal and “war porn” use of one of his famous photos of an American soldier holding a dying girl in Iraq. In Yon’s article he states the following:
A photograph can be a signal event in a war. Think of the flag raising at Iwo Jima, the naked Vietnamese girl fleeing her napalmed village, prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. These photos were not just important journalistically, but also strategically – each one literally shifted the course of a war. Photographs can be immensely powerful because they are single images, deep with meaning, able to resonate with disparate audiences, straight through language barriers, at an emotional, even visceral, level. A picture can tell a thousand words in a thousand languages, but placed in the wrong context, a photograph can be turned into propaganda, and the truth becomes a lie.
We need to know the truth about the wars we are currently fighting. That’s why I went to Iraq in the first place. Sometimes the difference between War Porn and the truth can be subtle, ambiguous, even subjective. But I know it when I see it. And if Michael Moore learned to respect not just my work, but other aspects of the truth, not to mention respecting his audience’s intelligence, he would better serve his own cause.
Somehow I imagine that Yon’s excellent points are lost on Michael Moore and his sledge hammer approach to driving home his political agenda. I applaud Michael Yon for standing up for his work and preventing it to be used in a manipulative way by Moore.
Mr Yon’s work is absolutely amazing. He is doing a great job. Michael Moore is nothing but an overweight propaganda machine.