This film, for me, a Marine Corps veteran, is a shot to the solar plexus.
From Jeff Wells' great Rigorous Intuition comes a trailer of a movie directed by Pat Dollard - a meth addict, sexual deviant and Hollywood agent turned right-wing war cheerleader. The movie juxtaposes some young Marines on the ground in Iraq with the peace movement back here in the US and the "MTV generation".
And it's pretty disgusting.
Dollard's trick is to contrast the worst of the troops that constitute Instapundit's repressed wet dream against the broader anti-war set here in the US. He takes low-information warriors whose main concern is not getting killed, and contrasts their perverted view of normalcy with those of us that live in the reality-based community.
This is a really hard diary to write, so follow me over to the other side so I can maybe flesh out what I'm trying to say with a bit more clarity.
I was less than 2 months past my 17th birthday when I joined the Marines in 1985. If I had to guess, I'd say the average age of the 52 men in my platoon (A Company, 1st Batallion, Parris Island) was 19 or 20. In the 12 weeks of bootcamp, they break you down and build you back up - civilians become slimy and worthy of scorn and contempt, you grow into a Proud Marine. You will carry yourself with bearing, dignity and honor everywhere you go. In and out of uniform, you are part of a brotherhood - an elite few that will always and forever carry a bond.
As importantly, you become a killing machine. Every Marine, regardless of specialty, is first and foremost a basic rifleman - and a warrior that lives for battle. At no time in your Marine Corps career is this more ingrained than in bootcamp. By the end of your twelfth week, you not only have a basic familiarity with how to kill, but you are excited to get started. If your drill instructors did their job well, your mushy seventeen - or nineteen, or twenty-two - year-old head has been reshaped and you want war. You've got your game face on 24/7, you've become part of something much larger than yourself and you're ready - primed, even - for war.
Today, I thank god war never came while I served. The closest I came to any kind of combat was being aboard the aircraft carrier, John F. Kennedy when two Navy pilots engaged and shot down two Libyan MIGs in January of 1989.
Even then, three years out of bootcamp and having been softened by the relatively lax air-wing life, the feeling of euphoria that washed over us all was exquisite. I remember the Captain of the ship announcing it over the ship-wide intercom system. A cheer rumbled through the decks and everyone - even the Navy "squids" - was awash in vicarious glory. we had taken out some bad guys.
Something else I just remembered about that time... I was aboard that ship in October of '88. Our Commanding Officer (CO) made it known that he wanted 100% registration for our squadron. He didn't care who we voted for - or even if we voted - but he insisted on 100% registration. I, being an immature and unwise little pissant, decided to challenge his authority. I thought I was the height of sophistication when I smugly said to my Sgt., "Ha. One's a clown, the other's a jackass and they are interchangeable. I'm protesting this election by not registering." My Sgt., being somewhat more mature and wise than I was, forged my signature to the registration form because I was never called to answer before the CO.
Anyway, I tell the story because it points up the low-information nature of your average young soldier. I didn't spend my nights reading Mother Jones, In These Times or The American Prospect. LOL! The thought that I would, today, is still laughable. No... I spent my time drinking beer and being incredibly inept at chasing skirts. That was just the priority for me - and the vast majority of the rest of my peers. It's not to say that we were all the same - there was a significant minority of fundies - but for the most part, we were young, and well... we were young...
So when you go watch this film, I want you to remember that I served in the relative normalcy of peacetime. The guys you see in the film... well, they've been under a bit more pressure...
Because the truth is, if this war had started 20 years earlier, I would have been one of these guys. I have no doubt about that.
So... What to make of this?
Well, the truth is that these kids do not have fully informed opinions. They are not "wise" - and, as much as it pains me to say it, they are not "mature". They are young men in hell coping in an entirely predictable way (given the training they received).
On the other side of the ledger, I expect that Dollard, creep that he is, picked out some pretty choice protesters to highlight in his film. I don't think we have to worry about him presenting any fully-informed and articulate anti-war voices...
Anyway, Dollard is about to get the star treatment from Fox and the right-blogosphere. He's an asshole. I encourage you to read his Vanity Fair profile in the March issue.
Update [2007-2-24 21:24:40 by Mike Stark]: The video's a few minutes long and requires a full viewing - maybe two - before you see what he's really doing there...
he begins with soldiers lamenting their peers back home - both wingnut chickenhawks and disengaged MTV watching blunt smokers...
then the "I'm not like you" sound track shows up and every "you can suck my dick" flashes a liberal or tv personality. This is a sleight of hand - these kids could care less about politics and if you smacked them over the head with Howard Dean - or Dick Cheney - they wouldn't know the difference...
he's actually portraying, pretty accurately, a point of view held by a lot of young soldiers. they trust each other, exclusively. whether you're pro-war chickenhawk or anti-war protester, they haven't got time for you if you aren't one of them
the scary thing about this is that these kids are having their worldview molded in a state of violent chaos. when this thing does draw down... when these kids come home... well, there's gonna be emotional hell to pay on both sides of the ledger. they are gonna have the most severe ptsd imaginable, and the rest of society will be vulnerable to their expressions of rage. already we've seen a spate of spousal abuse and killings at some front-line army bases.
this war's parallels to vietnam grow more and more vivid with every passing day.
have y'all seen the homeless Iraq vets story from Newsweek?