Operation Iconography

By Harriet Barovick, Tam Gray, Daniel Levy, Lina Lofaro, Andrew Meier, David Spitz, Flora Tartakovsky and Chris Taylor

Bombing Belgrade has certainly inspired the Serb city's thriving graphic-arts community. The "target" symbol worn by anti-NATO protesters, and Easter eggs (7), and now to be made into a Serbian stamp (5), is only the latest cultural icon to emerge from a people used to making memorable gestures--like the three-fingered Serb salute (2). From the sassy anti-American graphics of Serbian websites (4) to the menacing tiger patch (6) of Arkan's soldiers to the drawings that children (3) made reportedly "while the bombs were falling," the Serbs are winning the image war. How can the Pentagon, with its business-like flip charts (1), compete?