Posted on 03/27/2019 8:07:12 AM PDT by Sopater
A Few Good Men is a viciously anti-Marine play/film. I was unfortunate enough to see it off-Broadway before it became a movie, and walked out after about 40 minutes. It was essentially a bunch of negative stereotypes/caricatures that misrepresented Marine culture and the chain of command.
Anybody who would say ‘you can’t handle the truth” is the sick puppy that should be put down.
During the Battle for Okinawa, a VFW buddy of mine was taking a chow break while some of his fellow Marines were consolidating the bodies of dead Japanese and dumping them into a convenient nearby hole. When rigor mortis kept one of the bodies from going all the way in, the ever-inventive Marine pulled out his E-tool, hacked the legs off and tossed them in separately. And at no time during this butchery did my buddy stop stuffing his face.
One of the reasons that the War in Vietnam turned on a failure of national resolve was that it was the first war to be televised on the 6-o’clock news. And the coverage was deliberately one-sided.
No one wants to know how the sausage gets made.
Good grief.
There is an old quote about the most frightening thing is an 18 year old American soldier with a gun (or something like that)
I have never been in combat (thank God) but I have read enough to know that prolonged experience to combat affects people psychologically, makes them calloused and cynical to the point where outsiders stepping into it are shocked and horrified.
In most cases, I will not support people who impart their civilian morality to those who have to survive in pitched combat. That does not mean I support barbarism or atrocities, but in an enveloped combat environment (such as Fallujah in 2004) where a Marine shot a wounded insurgent in the head, I am going to defer to the people who have to live and try to survive it.
I recall reading about some Marines in the Pacific who, as they walked by a partially buried Japanese corpse with the arm and hand sticking out of the ground, would reach down and give it a shake as they walked by uttering some greeting. The thought of that would be astonishing and shocking to civilians, but soldiers would likely roll their eyes at worst.
Reading that article sounded like these people don’t even have an idea.
And just to be clear: What someone does in combat is on me as well as a US Citizen. Even if I don’t approve of a given war, I have given my imprimateur to the concept, for good or bad.
So, I as a citizen have to be prepared to accept responsiblity for what our military does on my behalf.
I support our military and what they have to occasionally do.
Daddy was sitting in the Okinawan mud drinking coffee and he set down his cup for a while. When he got up to go, he remembered to turn back and get the cup. That was when he saw that the cup was sitting on the chest of a “dead Jap”. It always bothered him that that didn’t bother him.
So the rough men who do violence on my behalf to bad guys aren’t all that full of warm fuzzies while plying their trade.
I know Im shocked.
That and we heavily controlled the media. Stormin' Norman learned from Vietnam not to let the idiots in the media to have free reign in showing combat.
6 trillion and 5,000 of our guys…“So girls can walk to school.”…Nah, I’d say that’s a really bad trade.
- they never should have been over there...We had NO business in Iraq or Afghanistan...
It is an easy calculation to be made by those responsible for our national security, i.e., our environment and our lifestyle: "How far from home should the front line be for maximum effectiveness at the least cost?"
Do you and I have enough information (intel) to second-guess them?
It is also ironic that our domestic left has a full court press to legalize marijuana in the U.S. and, further, allows all manner of profanity in the entertainment industry easily available to our young, but criticizes Marines who are in a combat environment 24/7 for profanity and smoking a joint while in garrison.
Agree.
See #29, it was for you.
“It should be banned and confiscated.“
You’re on the wrong forum.
L
What the TV news never showed was the GI's blown away by the VC or NVA. It was too easy to just show what would shock the anti war crowd and get them ratings.
That said ... a group of young men that are in combat are human and are a tight bunch of guys trying to keep each other alive. What reaction is expected when watching a gun position open up and grind 4 or 5 of your men, as close to you as any brothers you have been patrolling with for months into hamburger, then rushing the position to find the gunners? Then the public, anti war or not wonder why your unit never took any prisoners. I spent the first 5 months of 1968 on patrol in an air mobile assault unit, many firefights during that period of the 5 month TET battles chasing remnants back across the Cambodian border and my unit never took a prisoner. There was a reason, and to expect soldiers from wars past and current combat zones to magically have reacted and now act differently is to expect them to be non human.
That was the real problem. What did Big Media show?
Americans getting shot. Americans running for cover. Americans being wounded. Americans being killed. Americans shooting blindly. Americans being load onto medevac choppers. American airplanes crashed and burning. Americans sitting with a thousand-yard stare.
Did they ever show Charlie getting his ass kicked? OF COURSE NOT!!! That wouldn't support The Narrative.
He was assigned to shoot and edit footage of the combat for media networks, recruitment videos, and other propaganda.
****************************************
Uh, no.
Mostly, the combat camera work is for supplemental after action reports. Writing can only convey so much of the actual reality. Video can give the shot callers concerned with training and equipment issues back in the states a lot more info to use in decision making.
Meh.
Marines were not saints when I served with 1/6 (’79 to ‘81) just like they weren’t saints when I served with 3/26 in Vietnam (’68-’69). The attitudes they manifest, even the drug use, are not unexpected, surprising or even unprecedented to people who have served in the infantry.
It’s an ugly thing, war, and even more so when your rules of engagement don’t let you just wipe the bast***s out, all of them, and go home. So you find ways to endure the boredom and terror and gloss over the brutality of solving all your “problems” with maximum firepower using gallows humor, obscenity, and available drugs.
The drug of choice for a long time was alcohol. But these Marines come out of a society that is about a third of the way through legalizing marijuana nationwide. Not saying this is a good thing. Just noting the flow of events along with the widespread availability of marijuana here and there. So these young Marines use of it in Afghanistan, of all places, should come as no surprise.
The “Marine Corps” as an institution, like any other institution, is sensitive about its public image and reputation. It is also really sensitive to real instances of lapses in unit leadership and discipline. So its reaction to the film is also not unexpected.
The author of the article notes that the statute of limitations on charging the Marines with offenses against the UCMJ has expired. More important, statistically 3/4ths of the enlisted Marines in the film have probably completed their one and only enlistment contract and gone back to civilian life.
However, it is absolutely certain that every single officer and Staff NCO in 1/6 during “Combat Obscura” has been identified by HQMC and, if they are still on active duty, is currently getting the opportunity to “explain” to sour faced senior officers what the H**l happened on that outpost and how somehow they should not be held accountable for it.
Semper Fi.
BRAVO!!!
I have no criticism of our Marines or other service personnel. The job of our military is to kill people and break things where their/our leaders tell them to.
But damned right our leaders need to be second-guessed. Easy? well, it was wrong, and cost us dearly in blood and treasure.
Following the ‘how far from home’ line of logic, we obviously need to take over the entire planet to be safe.
Excellent post.
My thoughts completely.
Thanks for saying so.
I am always hesitant to say much of anything related to combat...I think it is the province of those who have been in it...but I do feel as a citizen, I should support our military unless they do something I find morally indefensible.
I know that probably sounds broad, but...if we send them off, we should support them. If we are sending them off for the wrong reasons, that is our job as citizens to work on, not the job of the person we send to fight.
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