The PG-Rated War

I am looking at a photo of a dead American, courtesy of al-Jazeera television network. The boy lies diagonally across the frame, his head in the lower-right-hand corner. His eyes are closed, and there is a bullet hole the size of a half-dollar in his right temple; blood puddles beneath his head and soaks his T shirt. You will not see this photograph on American television or in the pages of this magazine. When word came that al-Jazeera had broadcast this image and others like it, the official U.S. reaction was outrage. When similar photos of dead British soldiers were published, Tony Blair said, "To the families of the soldiers involved, it is an act of cruelty beyond comprehension."

It is that, to be sure. The right to privacy after death in combat should trump all other concerns. There are other good reasons not to show the true face of war, especially when the photos in question are acts of aggression perpetrated by an enemy intent on damaging American morale. But the desire not to sicken or offend the noncombatant public should not be among them. There is real danger when journalists edit the truth, especially when we sanitize the cataclysmic impact of high-powered munitions upon human flesh. There are those who say such images might induce America to become a nation of pacifists, but the exact opposite might be the case. The photo on this page--one of the first images of dead Americans published during World War II, which appeared in the Sept. 20, 1943, issue of LIFE magazine--was intended to incite anger and awareness. It came after Franklin D. Roosevelt decided that the home front had become too complacent, too distanced from the realities of combat, and so he lifted the censorship of American casualties. But the editors of LIFE still felt a need to explain their decision: "Why print this picture? ... The reason is that words are never enough ... the words do not exist to make us see, or know, or feel what it is like, what actually happens ... [I]f Bill"--one of the soldiers in question--"had the guts to take it, then we ought to have the guts to look at it."