Big, bold images of barbarism are shocking and shaking our civilization to its very core with the third brutal beheading and murder by ISIL of three: two US journalists James Foley, Steven Sotloff, and now humanitarian British worker David Haines. CNN, this was not an execution, but rather an act of barbarism and murder sent out over the airwaves via social media. And somehow they knew that these images would mar the psyche, and forever scar a generation. Just as the pictures of the Twin Towers collapsing thirteen years ago ushered us to a misguided war, and those of the little girl running down the road burned by napalm forever changed the Baby Boomers from the cover of Life Magazine to make reparations to Vietnam and its people — these barbaric images will stay in the soul of a whole generation and may indeed speed the formation a global coalition to eradicate this evil from our planet.
Images do matter and again the terrorists understand their insidious power. Social media was not meant for this. It was not what the merry team around Zuckerberg‘s Facebook dreamt of late at night; rather, this is the antithesis of the global village they helped to create.
Note: Cross published from the Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michelle-kraus/images-matter-isil-knew-t_b_5818808.html.