Surprising Lessons (How News Magazines Can Use Iconic Pictures to Keep the Neocon Dream Alive)

With Obama still assessing options in Afghanistan, this is one loaded and thoughtless picture to throw on the national newsstand.

Remember when the neocons pushed back against the growing opposition to the Iraq war with phrases like: “these colors don’t run.” Well, Newsweek is doing something similar here, not just equating Afghanistan with Vietnam, but linking any American withdrawal at this point with failure and shame (based on the out-of-nowhere delusion, highly equivocated in the article, that “we could have won”).

(photo: Hubert van Es. Saigon. April 29, 1975)