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I wonder..

Posted by jamesgarvin (A) on October 13, 2006 at 10:38:21

In Reply to: Sorry, but "good men" do not travel 10,000 from their homes to wage posted by tinear on October 13, 2006 at 05:03:41:

How many veterans you have had the courage to discuss this matter in person?

And here is the hypocritcal nature of your argument. Many in the liberal community have argue that most of the solders were not willing participants, that their economic station in life forced them to enter the military before there was a draft, which then forced them to go to Vietnam. But not, the leading liberal thinker on these here boards, calls them willing participants. I guess when the rich boys are allowed to defer, then let's talk about the non-voluntariness of service. When not convenient, let's talk about all these eighteen year old boys being murderers. At least have the courage to call them what you think them to be.

Comparing Nuremberg and Vietnam is wrong. The United States entered a Civil war on behalf one side. Which I think, in retrospect was wrong, it was certainly defensible. Should the South Vietnamese people have been allowed to be governed by a government of their own choice, no matter how corrupt? I think so. That the U.S. chose to interveve to protect that right was probably a mistake, it was philosophically defensible. Because a small minority of soldiers committed atrocities does not change that fact.

On the other hand, W.W.II was a war as a result of one countries aggression towards a race of people within it's borders, but, more relevantly, because of that countries' aggression toward other sovereign nations. The Nuremberg trials were designed, primarily, to bring Nazis who were responsible for killing Jews to justice. Those were not acts of war, but of civilian crimes by a government on it's own people.

Morality is important in art? Well, is it essential? Without dredging up more vitriol, I am of the opinion that Saving Private Ryan is the best anti-war film ever made. Why? Because it shows, better than any other film of which I am aware, what war is really like, in the trenches. Yet there is no overt message that "war is bad." Your political viewpoint suggests that if SPR were made with the Vietnam War as a backdrop, it would cease to be a good film, art, because it did not do justice to what you regard as important - depicting the Vietnamese as "people", or showing them backwards. On the other hand, if Germans are protrayed in a bad light, who cares.

And therein lies my point. A good film should be a good film, regardless of the backdrop. I think Coppola was making an anti-war film, he simply may have been using a language that you did not understand. Sheen was made amoral by the war, Duvall was crazy, not someone I would trust to pump my gas, and that to some people war is a profitable enterprise. Those are not the statements of an amoral man or film.

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