Michael Herr, Dispatches (1977)

“[The Plymouth Settlers] had no friends to welcome them...[and] besides, what could they see but a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wild beasts and wild men.” William Bradford, 1651

“[The Frontier] is the meeting place between savagery and civilization.”Frederick Jackson Turner, 1893

“The spread of the English-speaking peoples over the world’s waste spaces has been...the event over all others most far-reaching in its effects and its importance.” Theodore Roosevelt, 1906

“Iraq is no diversion. It is a place where civilization is taking a decisive stand against chaos and terror.”George W. Bush, 2004

Atrocity and the Media

Marc Riboud (1967)

Moratorium on the War in Vietnam Protest March,

October 15 1969

Eddie Adams (1968)

Nick Ut (1972)

Horst Faas (1965)

Horst Faas (1965)

“In any war story, but especially a true one, it’s difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen. What seems to happen becomes its own happening and has to be told that way.... [A]fterward, when you go to tell about it, there is always that surreal seemingness, which makes the story seem untrue, but which in fact represents the hard and exact truth as it seemed.”

“In war you lose your sense of the definite, hence your sense of truth itself, and therefore it’s safe to say that in a true war story nothing is ever absolutely true.”

Tim O’Brien, ‘How to Tell a True War Story’ in The Things They Carried