The Politics of "Off to War"

[faithincowboys]

The documentary "Off to War" on the discovery Times channel is gripping television--no doubt about it, but the show has a distinct antiwar tilt. The show features a malcontent National Guardsman who has nothing nice to say about Bush, the war or the Iraqis. He also was no Kerry fan, though his incomprehensibly dopey, dumpy mother voted for him back in Arkansas. He is actually a Naderite from Arkansas-- and the documentarians behind the movie would have you believe that he's the average bear in the backwoods.

Needless to say, the space for the show on the Discovery Times website is as heavily slanted as the show. I tried to post to it and am unable to do so. It is a heavily regulated site that cherry picks posts with political viewpoints they want to make.

This is what I tried to post and was unable to..

I watch this show and I am affected by the personal stories. I think Curtis and his family are lovely. I think Ronald Jackson and Tommy Erp's wife and mother is saintly. I can't say the same for Hertlein's Mother-- I think she is a drama queen who doesn't understand what a stiff upper lip means. I suspect she was a great burden to her son while he was deployed.

I think the brothers responsible for this show had a clear agenda. Hertlein-- who received cynicsm from his Mother's milk-- is just the malcontent they needed to build the narrative around.

This show is good and important, but it has no sense of history. There is no acknowledgement of the Frozen Chosin or the men in the Higgins boats who in rough seas landed on a fortified beach head under heavy German mortar fire. No sense of the men who got blown to bits on that beach or drowned in that water and were never recovered.

The men who fought and died in Korea, Vietnam, Japan and Europe would've given their left scrotum's to have fought in Iraq instead.

The bellyaching going on in this show is done in a vaccum. The only guy with real command leadership is Lt. Col Brian Mason-- a man with a sense of history and a commitment to duty.

It's clear to me that Sgt Betts faked an injury to go home to his unsaintly wife. He let his men down-- it was no great surprise to me that he would tell his young step children that Kerry, whose presidential platform was to retreat, should be Commander In Chief.

Soldiers have always bitched about things-- this War like Vietnam is the only time in our history where there were media types determined to break our national will. I guarantee you the men in Europe on the Higgins boat had they had a camera in their face would've bitched about Roosevelt. Luckily for America, there were reporters back then who were patriots and didn't ask soldiers, in the grip of fear and tension and frustration, to pontificate about politics and the like.

Had they done so, they would've been roundly condemned for providing aid and comfort to the enemy. But our nation has let its standards fall-- there ain't no way we would've won World War II with the media we have now.

*****

Anyone who has seen the show would agree with me... unfortunately that point of view is forbidden on the message boards.

[faithincowboys]

Ping...

Have you seen this show?

[faithincowboys]

Ping...

Have you seen this show?

[L98Fiero]

I have tried to watch it but it's just too blatantly left I can't stomach it. It's all about trying to unseat Bush in the last election. Major propoganda.

[faithincowboys]

Despite that, there is stuff to recommend about it. I believe Curtis Rohrsheib is a Republican.. his wife,usually a Democrat, even voted for Bush. Sgt. Stone is also Republican. The reality is The Iraqi police and soldiers arent worth a crap. Historically we haven't thought our allies in armsa were worth a crap.

There are reasons for them to bitch-- there are always reasons for men one step ahead of mortality to bitch.

The sinful thing is the documentarians exploitation of ordinary fears into something politically potent.

[sopwith]

you can't miss it they play it every dam weekend.
I watch it the first time months ago and haven't watched it since.

[L98Fiero]

Just visual NYT articles. Pretty much sums it up. What I saw of it was, angry, frustrated family-members who were voting for Kerry and upset as hell when he lost. From watching it, one would the the Iraqi police and soldiers sucked. That's what they are trying to portray. That it's not worth it to fight for these people. Of course, I haven't seen any episodes that look recent. Maybe it's better now but I doubt it.

[faithincowboys]

Did anything about it surprise you, move you, ....

The reason why the Left loves it so much is because it features men with Red State accents in muddy boots who are skeptical of "Bush's war."

In reality, soldiers putting their lives on the line always bitch.. there's so much tension. You are in existential moments... in those moments most men, especially "weekend soldiers," vacillate between belief and doubt.

The one guy who was unflappably positive-- was an exceptional man, a devout Christian, Lt. Col Brian Mason.

[faithincowboys]

This weekend they are leaving Iraq... I suspect many , now safe at home, to be more positive about the experience.

By my count, most voted for Bush. The one who didn't is a Virginia Clinton type... a total horse's ass trying to be Blanche DuBois.. She seemed to be a candidate for Munchausen By proxy (probable sic). She loved that she was in a soap opera. Her son, the malcontent in the middle, is just a whining jackass.

He is hardly the best antiwar vehicle for the Left-- his feeling is that all Iraqis should be killed. So needless to say, had he been a prison guard at Abu Ghraib he would have been a Geneva Convention breaking sh*tkicker.

Maybe that's why they use him...his sentiment "Kill em all and get the eff out-- the Arab Muslims are a terrible people...Let's stop spending so much blood and money on a doomed War for a-hole muslims" is more tempting to the people that still believe in the War than the "Let's stop killing innocent Iraqis, we are an inherently evil country" argument that works on leftwingers.

[L98Fiero]

Probably an accurate assessment.

[faithincowboys]

Obviously the other ones who didn't are the awful Joe Betts-- a weakling-- and his horrible, stuck on stupid, faithless wife.

Betts is obviosuly faking an injury to get out of Iraq. No wonder why he identified so much with the ultimate faker, Traitor Kerry.

[PJammers]

I watched it once. Couldn't watch the show again. During Desert Shield we had reservists supplement our Fighter Wing. The majority of them including their detachment chief did nothing but whine and complain. How they were going to miss fall enrollment and among other things.

They had become such a drag on unit morale that when the president signed them on for another 90 days our commander was so fed up he sent them all back to California.

I thought that this was an isolated incident until I was deployed with another group of "citizen soldiers" with almost the same result.

Now I watch a show about reservists going to Iraq and see that nothing has changed.

Mind you not all reservists were trouble. It was mainly the freeloaders who joined to get free education. The good troops were mostly prior active duty who understood and accepted their role.

v/r

[faithincowboys]

I think you're on to something. Joe Betts is a cartoon he is so bad... lazy, disloyal, cowardly... the only people who could be pleased with his performance are KKK types who are thrilled they finally found the guy that resembles their hate speech.

[Clock King]

I haven't seen an actual "documentary" (one that presents facts and doesn't try to weave a political agenda) in years. Fat Boy Michael Moore ruined it for everyone.

[tuckrdout]

Thanks for posting this. I just found this show and have it on TiVo.

I noticed that the guys with positive Bush messages got very little face time on the show.

I had the same feelings as you. Bett's wife made me furious! Geez. Whine, whine and whine..."I DIDN'T KNOW IT WOULD BE SO HARD HERE ALONE!!" What a selfish pig. Does she not know that men and women have sacrificed much more than she has so that she could live the good life here in the USA? During WW2 the men had no communication and were not home for FOUR years!

[CJacobs]

I watched almost all of the show. Seemed like 8 hours or more in total.

I am from a small town just up the road on 64 highway from Clarksville. I used to work at the Carbon Plant in Altus. By the way, Altus is where the first Paris Hilton, "The Simple Life" was filmed.

I too saw the slant in the program. Funny thing is, anyone that is a moderate, such as others in my family that watched the program, don't see the bias. But they too did question why Matt was the one they followed so much. They also believed they should have chosen someone like SGT Jackson or SGT Curtis R.

Oh, and LT Mason was a superb leader. At the end, he explained what they all had accomplished in Iraq and what they should all be very proud of doing.