Image of Terrorism
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Re “How a Powerful Image Can Shape a War,” Commentary, Nov. 9: James Zumwalt suggests that the famous photograph of a South Vietnamese police official summarily executing a man in the streets of Saigon in 1968 should not be viewed with revulsion because the man with the gun pointed at his head was a terrorist. That is, he was involved in “a coordinated assault against military and civilian targets” in which “scores of innocent civilians were killed or wounded.”
By this definition, weren’t the American pilots who bombed North Vietnam also terrorists? I wonder if Zumwalt would be equally sanguine about a photograph of a North Vietnamese police official summarily executing a captured American pilot--John McCain, for instance.
In some cases, “terrorism” may be in the eye of the beholder.
Michael Dewberry
South Pasadena
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