The Photo That Lost Every War Since?

Fox has a fascinating article:

Behind the picture: 'Three Dead Americans,' Buna Beach, 1943

The teaser to the article from other pages is "The photo that won World War II," but I think the editor who wrote that teaser got it all wrong. It's quite possible that this photo, the first of its kind, the herald of a new era of visceral visual journalism, was the photo that caused the U.S. to stall in every war since:

What is ultimately so notable about Strock’s picture — beyond its sheer technical excellence, and its quiet power — is that when it was published in LIFE magazine in September 1943, it was the first time that any photograph depicting dead American troops had appeared in any American publication during World War II.

...

For months after Strock made his now-iconic picture, LIFE’s editors pushed the American government’s military censors to allow the magazine to publish that one photograph. The concern, among some at LIFE and certainly many in the government, was that Americans were growing complacent about a war that was far from over and in which an Allied victory was far from certain.

Once citizens started seeing these sorts of photos, videos and 'gritty' journalism, sure, maybe they weren't "complacent" but what they became, in later wars, was something entirely difference than "supportive." Was that the purpose all along? It's grown worse with every war, so that now, through images, wars like the Iraq and Afghanistan wars become intolerable to the public even though the list of U.S. dead and wounded over the entire course of the war is less than numerous single battles of the World War II era.

Could World War II's U.S. war effort have survived live broadcasts of Normandy and Iwo Jima to name just two of many? I kind of doubt it.

I'd ask, on the other hand, could the Holocaust occurred as well, with so much modern, instant media? But, sadly, we've already proven that "yes," modern age holocausts can occur in the Sudan, Somalia, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, South Africa, and many other places.

It's kind of troubling to think that the information age hasn't crippled the monsters at all, just the will of the people who would fight the monsters.