I found this documentary immensely moving, because it captured beautifully the way in which the West Point class of '67 was blindsided by the Vietnam War and by the terrible toll that war took on its participants, both in body and in soul. I was stunned at first by how the documentary was so candid about that disastrous war, recounting the disillusionment (not to say a sense of betrayal) of the cadets turned war combatants. And yet, in the end, it pulled back from the brink it needed to push over if it really wanted to get at the truth of the matter. (And perhaps it's asking too much of a documentary that is part of a project that is described as "an oral history of West Point".) For the truth of the matter is that none of the wars undertaken by the US since WWII can really be described as wars to "defend our liberties". None of the countries we've invaded (Korea, Vietnam, Lebanon, Panama, Grenada, Iraq, & Afghanistan) could in any sense be considered a threat to our freedom. And here's where the documentary came up short: It couldn't quite bring itself to make clear that all that loss of life (more than 120,000 American lives lost and hundreds of thousands of lives dismembered physically and mentally--as well as the death dealt to 4 to 6 million non-Americans) was pointless and to no good purpose.
Instead, in the final third of the documentary we are told that our soldiers who fought in Vietnam (but the same rhetoric is used to describe our soldiers in all the other wars since 1950) were "heroes" and "noble warriors". There can be no disputing the men's physical courage, nor should we fail to commiserate with them for the bodily suffering and mental anguish they endured. But that is not enough to qualify them as "heroes" and "noble warriors". If it were, we would not find it unseemly for the Germans and the Japanese to honor their fallen soldiers of WWII as "heroes". To qualify as a "hero" or a "noble warrior", one must be acting on behalf of a just and good cause. And none of those post-WWII wars truly qualifies. They were fought for petty political gain by insecure Presidents (Panama, Grenada, Iraq, Afghanistan) or out of convictions stemming from ideological and geo-political misconceptions (Korea, Vietnam, Lebanon, Iraq). Furthermore, the US soldiers who invaded countries which had never fired a shot at the US were bound to find themselves in a war where the line between the civilian population and enemy combatants was blurred--a formula for the commission of atrocities and war crimes on a massive scale.
And so, in the end, our poor soldiers were not "heroes" but victims swallowed up by the designs of the powerful. One does not "honor" victims, one grieves for their needless suffering.
Instead, in the final third of the documentary we are told that our soldiers who fought in Vietnam (but the same rhetoric is used to describe our soldiers in all the other wars since 1950) were "heroes" and "noble warriors". There can be no disputing the men's physical courage, nor should we fail to commiserate with them for the bodily suffering and mental anguish they endured. But that is not enough to qualify them as "heroes" and "noble warriors". If it were, we would not find it unseemly for the Germans and the Japanese to honor their fallen soldiers of WWII as "heroes". To qualify as a "hero" or a "noble warrior", one must be acting on behalf of a just and good cause. And none of those post-WWII wars truly qualifies. They were fought for petty political gain by insecure Presidents (Panama, Grenada, Iraq, Afghanistan) or out of convictions stemming from ideological and geo-political misconceptions (Korea, Vietnam, Lebanon, Iraq). Furthermore, the US soldiers who invaded countries which had never fired a shot at the US were bound to find themselves in a war where the line between the civilian population and enemy combatants was blurred--a formula for the commission of atrocities and war crimes on a massive scale.
And so, in the end, our poor soldiers were not "heroes" but victims swallowed up by the designs of the powerful. One does not "honor" victims, one grieves for their needless suffering.
