I do not not know where to begin, except to agree with the other reviewers who stated that this film is pro-war. War has always has been and will be a business enterprise. The war in Iraq is/was about oil, geopolitics and nothing more. If you think otherwise there is not much hope for you. This movie was complete nonsense. I will end my review with a rather large quote from Fred Reed about the war on this subject, who could sum it up much better and more eloquently than myself. I apologize for a large quote, but this man was a soldier and he knows the score:
"A friend recently asked me what I would tell a young man thinking about enlisting in the military. (He had in mind his son.) I would tell him this, which I wish someone had told me: Kid, you are being suckered. You are being used. You need to think carefully before signing that enlistment contract.
First, notice that the men who want to send you to die were draft-dodgers. President Bush was of military age during Vietnam, but he sat out the war in the Air National Guard. The Guard was then a common way of avoiding combat. Bush could do it because he was a rich kid who went to Yale, and his family had connections.
He dodged, but he wants you to go.
Vice President Cheney, also of military age during Vietnam, also didn't go. Why? When asked by the press, he said, "I had other priorities." In other words, he was too important to risk his precious self overseas. He dodged, but wants you to go.
In talking to recruiters, you need to understand what you are up against. You are probably nineteen or twenty years old, full of energy and vinegar as we used to say, just starting to know the world. Which means that you don't yet know it.... They know that young men, the ones that are worth anything anyway, want to prove themselves, want adventure, want to show what they can do. Everything a recruiter does is carefully calculated to play on this. They go to recruiting school to learn how.
"The Few. The Proud." You don't think that came out of the Marine Corps, do you? These phrases—"An Army of One," "Be All You Can Be"--come from ad agencies in New York. Nobody in those ad agencies, I promise you, was ever in the Marine Corps. New York sells the military the way it sells soap. It has no interest in you at all.
Recruiters know exactly what they are doing. They are manly, which appeals to gutsy young guys who don't want to be mall rats. They are confident. They have a physical fitness, a clean-cut appearance that looks good compared to all those wussy lawyers in business suits. They invite you to come into a man's world. They promise you college funds. (Check and see how many actually ever get those funds. Read the small print.) Until they put you in combat. Then it's too late. You can't change your mind. They send you to jail for a long time if you do.
Combat is not the adventure you think it is. Know what happens when an RPG hits a tank? Nothing good. The cherry juice—hydraulic fluid that turns the turret—can vaporize and then blow. I saw the results in the Naval Support Activity hospital in Danang in 1967. A tank has a crew of four. Two burned to death, screaming as they tried to get out. The other two were scalded pink, under a plastic sheet that was always foggy with serum evaporating from burns where the skin had sloughed off. They probably lived. Know what burn scars look like? The recruiters won't tell you this. They know, but they won't tell you. Ever seen a guy who just took a round through the face? He's a bloody mess with his eyes gone, nasty hole where his nose was, funny white cartilage things sticking out of dripping meat. Suppose he'll ever have another girlfriend? Not freaking likely. He'll spend the next fifty years as a horror in some forsaken VA hospital.
But the recruiters won't tell you this. They want you to think that it's an adventure.
Other things happen that, depending on your head, may or may not bother you. Iraq means combat in cities. Ordinary people live there. You pop a grenade through a window, or hit a building with a burst from the Chain gun, or maybe put a tank round through it. Then you find the little girl with her bowels hanging out, not quite dead yet, with her mother screaming over what's left. You'd be surprised how much blood a small kid has.
You get to live with that picture for the rest of your life. And you will live with it. The recruiter will tell you that it doesn't happen, that it's the exception, that I'm a communist journalist. Believe him if you want. Believe him now, while you can. When you get back, you'll believe me.
Don't expect thanks from a grateful nation. Somebody might buy you a drink in a bar. That's about all you get. Many will regard you as a criminal or a fool.
Wars seem important at the time, but they usually aren't. Five years later, they are history. About sixty thousand GIs died in Vietnam. We lost. Nothing happened. It was a stupid war for nothing. Today the guys who lost faces and legs and internal organs back then are just freaks. Nobody gives a damn about them, and nobody will give a damn about you. A war is a politician's toy, but your wheelchair is forever. If you want adventure, try the fishing fleet in Alaska.
Think about it."
"A friend recently asked me what I would tell a young man thinking about enlisting in the military. (He had in mind his son.) I would tell him this, which I wish someone had told me: Kid, you are being suckered. You are being used. You need to think carefully before signing that enlistment contract.
First, notice that the men who want to send you to die were draft-dodgers. President Bush was of military age during Vietnam, but he sat out the war in the Air National Guard. The Guard was then a common way of avoiding combat. Bush could do it because he was a rich kid who went to Yale, and his family had connections.
He dodged, but he wants you to go.
Vice President Cheney, also of military age during Vietnam, also didn't go. Why? When asked by the press, he said, "I had other priorities." In other words, he was too important to risk his precious self overseas. He dodged, but wants you to go.
In talking to recruiters, you need to understand what you are up against. You are probably nineteen or twenty years old, full of energy and vinegar as we used to say, just starting to know the world. Which means that you don't yet know it.... They know that young men, the ones that are worth anything anyway, want to prove themselves, want adventure, want to show what they can do. Everything a recruiter does is carefully calculated to play on this. They go to recruiting school to learn how.
"The Few. The Proud." You don't think that came out of the Marine Corps, do you? These phrases—"An Army of One," "Be All You Can Be"--come from ad agencies in New York. Nobody in those ad agencies, I promise you, was ever in the Marine Corps. New York sells the military the way it sells soap. It has no interest in you at all.
Recruiters know exactly what they are doing. They are manly, which appeals to gutsy young guys who don't want to be mall rats. They are confident. They have a physical fitness, a clean-cut appearance that looks good compared to all those wussy lawyers in business suits. They invite you to come into a man's world. They promise you college funds. (Check and see how many actually ever get those funds. Read the small print.) Until they put you in combat. Then it's too late. You can't change your mind. They send you to jail for a long time if you do.
Combat is not the adventure you think it is. Know what happens when an RPG hits a tank? Nothing good. The cherry juice—hydraulic fluid that turns the turret—can vaporize and then blow. I saw the results in the Naval Support Activity hospital in Danang in 1967. A tank has a crew of four. Two burned to death, screaming as they tried to get out. The other two were scalded pink, under a plastic sheet that was always foggy with serum evaporating from burns where the skin had sloughed off. They probably lived. Know what burn scars look like? The recruiters won't tell you this. They know, but they won't tell you. Ever seen a guy who just took a round through the face? He's a bloody mess with his eyes gone, nasty hole where his nose was, funny white cartilage things sticking out of dripping meat. Suppose he'll ever have another girlfriend? Not freaking likely. He'll spend the next fifty years as a horror in some forsaken VA hospital.
But the recruiters won't tell you this. They want you to think that it's an adventure.
Other things happen that, depending on your head, may or may not bother you. Iraq means combat in cities. Ordinary people live there. You pop a grenade through a window, or hit a building with a burst from the Chain gun, or maybe put a tank round through it. Then you find the little girl with her bowels hanging out, not quite dead yet, with her mother screaming over what's left. You'd be surprised how much blood a small kid has.
You get to live with that picture for the rest of your life. And you will live with it. The recruiter will tell you that it doesn't happen, that it's the exception, that I'm a communist journalist. Believe him if you want. Believe him now, while you can. When you get back, you'll believe me.
Don't expect thanks from a grateful nation. Somebody might buy you a drink in a bar. That's about all you get. Many will regard you as a criminal or a fool.
Wars seem important at the time, but they usually aren't. Five years later, they are history. About sixty thousand GIs died in Vietnam. We lost. Nothing happened. It was a stupid war for nothing. Today the guys who lost faces and legs and internal organs back then are just freaks. Nobody gives a damn about them, and nobody will give a damn about you. A war is a politician's toy, but your wheelchair is forever. If you want adventure, try the fishing fleet in Alaska.
Think about it."