CDZ I Recently Watched American Sniper

[candycorn]

[...]

I do not think our combat women and men were there to maim and sew slaughter. Except for the exceedingly dense or the exceedingly gung-ho, the average soldier knew this was a war of choice and that the Iraqi people were not our enemy by and large.

And I wonder how much that awareness contributed to the inordinately large number of PTSD diagnoses ascribed to Iraq and Afghanistan veterans compared with the relatively low number of "shell-shock" and battle fatigue cases deriving from World War Two -- in spite of the relatively more severe and punishing conditions endured by the WW-II veterans.

Imagine you are placed in a position to kill someone who never did a thing to you and was opposing you in the righteous act of defending his homeland and family. If you have no choice but to do it or go to prison, you do it.

Now imagine you kill someone who has invaded your homeland and is oppressing you and yours. Do you believe the difference in those two circumstances would affect your psyche differently?

Of course they would. As for then and now
Differences....the culture is different as are childrens' upbringing. You don't get a shiny coin for killing your enemy in real life. But moreover....in WWII guys would take weeks if not months to muster out and catch a troop ship back to the US and then face a several day bus or train ride back home. Today, you can be home by week's end and your time to get acclimated and prepare mentally is condensed.

I would wager that Mr. Kyle knew the same thing. Orders were orders and if it meant that person over there was to be taken out, they got taken out. For that I cannot blame them.

Of course we can't blame them. But blame is not the issue. Understanding the effect of guilt is -- as Dostoevsky has succinctly pointed out.

The movie was the topic....was it not?

 

[Picaro]

The US still thinks war is a John Wayne movie and this movie demeans and belittles what Kyle and others gave to their country.

Well, how many movies about PFC's doing motor pool maintenance on trucks or Admin clerks auditing supply lists would you pay to go see?

That would depend on the plot, who wrote it, and who played in it. One very good current example is The Buffalo Soldiers. No Gung-Ho macho bs but an excellent movie with a uniquely honest glimpse of contemporary peacetime Army life.
But you're quite right and I apologize for the smart-ass response. Most military movies intend to stimulate the primal tribal-warrior impulse with no regard for reality and civilized morals. The typical theme is presumptive good guys vs the bad, whomever they may be. But I will say there has been a recent trend to reach beyond the, we are heroes, tripe.

They're largely aimed at teenagers with disposable income to blow, so lots of stuff has to been blown up, people shot down in hordes by one or two Ubermenches, etc., etc.. The video game culture, mainly. 'Hollywood' is in the marketing business. I agree on the Good Vs. Bad. I asked a couple of my Malaysian Chinese college friends once why old American westerns, like Bonanza, were so popular in Asia. They said it was because you could tell who the good guys and bad guys were; most people in the world don't live in societies that even acknowledge such concepts in real life. I think it also says something about larger issues, such as why Christianity is growing over there even as it declines here, and even in Muslim countries, where severe existential oppression can't stamp it out.

I'm not sure the trend toward anti-heroes is all that great, really; most of that is just pandering to another type of propaganda and confirmation bias, and not necessarily any more honest, either. Apocalypse Now comes to mind; great movie, but not very honest, and in fact very misleading on many levels, but it played to the prevailent PC orthodoxy at the time, so it naturally won lots of awards and many people think it's a 'realistic' movie, instead just another propaganda flick.

 

[Coyote]

Folks - this is the CDZ, no high jacking threads - let's discuss the topic in a civil manner