A few things Eastwood gets totally right:
1) The scene where the decision to raise the second flag is brilliant. Shit rolls downhill, and all soldiers are the same
2) What haunts Doc, hearing "Corpsman" everywhere.
3) The end credits are the most moving part of the film - we are allowed to see the real men, the real pictures.
4) The "worthiness" of the picture. Whether it was fake or real is pursued by the media (briefly, thank goodness), questioned by the men, and ignored by the government. But the picture did (and does) represent everything mythical and powerful about the United States, and then men and women who serve it. Whatever stories get invented around the image don't do the truth of it justice. All the men in the image WERE heroes. It does represent victory. Eastwood avoided addressing that one way or the other, and let the mundane moment, and the power it represented share the stage. Circumstances be damned, blinders off...and the picture is still everything we believed it was. Just not in the way we expected.