"...For many years I have been presenting to high school classes a 90-minute session titled “The Myths and Truths of the Vietnam War.”
One of my opening comments is, “The truth about Vietnam is bad enough without twisting it all out of shape with myths, half-truths and outright lies from the anti-war left.”
...Part of my presentation is showing them four iconic photos from Vietnam, aired publicly around the world countless times to portray America’s evil involvement in Vietnam.
I tell the students “the rest of the story” excluded by the news media about each photo, then ask, “Wouldn’t you want the whole story before you decide for yourself what to think?”
- One of those photos is the summary execution of a Viet Cong soldier in Saigon, capital city of South Vietnam, during the battles of the Tet Offensive in 1968.
Here’s what I tell students about the execution in the photo.
“Before you decide what to think, here’s what the news media never told us.
This enemy soldier had just been caught after he murdered a Saigon police officer, the officer’s wife, and the officer’s six children.
The man pulling the trigger was Nguyen Ngoc Loan, South Vietnam’s Chief of National Police.
His actions were supported by South Vietnamese law, and by the Geneva Convention since the captured killer was an un-uniformed illegal combatant.
Now, you might still be disgusted by the summary execution, but wouldn’t you want all the facts before you decide what to think?”
- The other one-sided stories about iconic photos I use are a 9-year-old girl named Kim Phuc, running down a road after her clothes were burned off by a napalm bomb, a lady kneeling by the body of a student at Kent State University, and a helicopter on top of a building with too many evacuees trying to climb aboard.
Each one had only the half of the story told by news media during the war, the half that supported the anti-war narrative..."
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