There's no such thing as a free lunch...Or is there?

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It's official. The next president of Indonesia is former army general Prabowo Subianto. Quite how the next five years will pan out is anyone's guess but hopefully the foreign pundits who always bring up his dodgy human rights record will be proven wrong. Nonetheless, on policy making, Prabowo's popularist move to literally offer the poor 'a free lunch' every day of the week does not augur well for the future. Such a policy - if it ever came to fruition - would cost a phenomenal amount of money and likely lead to huge inefficiencies (food waste) and poor incentives (make people lazy). Another concern is Prabowo's strong nationalist bent. Thus, in the possible event that he finds himself with his back against the proverbial wall in the face of stern economic challenges, there is a big chance that he will simply scapegoat foreigners. But he will have to be careful. Construction of the new capital city, Nusantara, for example, is highly dependent on foreign in
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Eddie Adams’ lasting legacy

40 years ago this month Eddie Adams took one of the most memorable war photographs ever – the execution of a Vietcong prisoner by General Nguyan Ngoc Loan.


A truly horrific picture. But ask many Americans today and, if they are on the right, will tell you that the General Nguyan Ngoc Loan did the right thing.

After all, the Geneva Convention specifically states that combatants not wearing uniforms are not subject to rules governing prisoners of war and can be shot - as the Vietcong man was.

And this was also the view of Eddie Adams (source: The Times):

What the photograph didn't say was, 'What would you do if you were the general at that time and place on that hot day, and you caught the so-called bad guy after he blew away one, two or three American soldiers?

When Loan died, Adams - who had called him many times to apologize for the damage done to Loan's reputation - sent a bunch of flowers with the inscription:
I'm sorry. There are tears in my eyes.

This is all very well of course.

But would we feel the same about the photo if the man being executed had been an undercover US special operations soldier captured in enemy territory in Iraq?

Somehow I think not.

Comments

  1. observer9 February 2008 at 09:02

    I have read many of your threads/stories (I don't know what you call writings in this day and age) and they are all very interesting. Write on and i will read on!

    ReplyDelete
  2. The Sycologist11 February 2008 at 12:27

    thanks observer,
    do you have a blog yourself?

    ReplyDelete
  3. observer12 February 2008 at 08:30

    Just like to observe....you must admit, black swans are rather stunning no matter how ominous to some!

    ReplyDelete
  4. David5 May 2012 at 04:14

    It is hard for those of us who have never experienced war to understand it. I roomed with a Cambodian for two semesters at graduate school, and he was an officer in Vietnam war over a band of Cambodians. His mother and father had been executed by the communists (hung), his brother beheaded, and his sister had fled to Belgium. He said that their guerrilia band was a roaming group and did not have the capacity to take prisoners and hold them. When they did take prisoners, he had to give the order to have someone execute them or do it himself and move on. Most of the time he had to do it himself. The flip side of this was that he had to carry a pistol strapped to his leg. If he was captured, because he was an officer, he knew he would be tortured before they put him to death, so this pistol was for him to commit suicide before they got to him. So it could have went either way. He said that he could not explain war to me if I had not experienced myself.

    ReplyDelete

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