That said, I don't really understand either your argument or the original poster's. The tanks never ran over "tank man." He was probably arrested and killed by China's secret police. The point isn't whether or not some poor low-level Chinese soldier did or did not try to drive around a single man. The point is the symbolic power of the image: an unarmed civilian facing down the full force of an autocratic regime. The point is that the Chinese government would send in a giant fleet of tanks to disperse their own citizens from protesting. The point is that for a brief moment in the summer of 1989 a large movement of people stood up to the Chinese regime, and they were brutally crushed. And it is all captured in a single image.

There is a reason that there is no American equivalent of this image. We generally don't send tanks in to disperse protesters. On the other hand, we will always have this stain on our conscience, but at least I can call it up on Google, with ease, whenever I please.