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May 01, 2004
Platoon: A Second Look
Last night I saw portions of Oliver Stone's 'Platoon' once again. I dropped in at the point just before the American soldiers had decided to destroy a village. It has been 16 years since I first saw this film and I must have learned a great deal because this time out I was aghast and in complete disbelief that American soldiers would conduct themselves in such a way.
The first scene had one of the young soldiers shooting at a one legged villager to make him dance. The next soldier gleefully cracked his head open with a rifle butt.
It gets worse, a screaming defiant woman is rifled down as an annoyance. Her son is forced into a battlefield confession by having a gun place to the head of his young daughter. I'm not even going to get into the rape scene.
War may be hell, but 'Platoon' is slander. Nothing presented here makes any tactical sense, not that I'm a soldier, but really. Here you have a group of 15 or so men who have completely lost their minds acting out of pure desparation and confusion. Nothing about the way they were acting suggests any battlefield discipline or even basic cohesion. It's as if they are all sleepwalking through atrocities, stepping aside while each of their cohort acts out some twisted fantasy. Gone savage.
I turned off the tube as the ineffective leader of this Platoon finally yells 'Cut it out!' and the gang troops sheepishly, mechanically away with their torches and grenades to 'save' the village.
This week, several American soldiers and their commanders were accused of torture and similar war crimes. It's difficult for me to assess this matter given the ubiquity of media and the way information travels. On the one hand, a handful of soldiers going off the deep end in 13 months of combat and occupation is a thankfully small fact. It's amazing that we find out so much so quickly. On the other hand, who knows how much of this may have transpired already.
Messages such as Oliver Stone's suggest strongly that there is not much more to soldiering than arming oneself, putting on a uniform and letting the beast out; that orders are little more than bullies shouting, and that killing in war is nothing more than mass murder. In this he suggests that soldiers are no better than violent criminal thugs. We should know better.
War is not a stage for passion plays of the id. Enough such madness happens, but there is a critical difference between irregulars and professional armies. So we should remember this difference when our imagination is stretched and our trust is strained by images of brutality. If a situation such as Stone's takes place where those who would be soldiers simply act like stunned onlookers or crazed savages, we should know there is something radically wrong. That's not war, that's war crime.
We should be proud that our professional army is making examples of these war criminals. Their prosecution is business as usual, not their crime.
Posted by mbowen at May 1, 2004 10:21 AM
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Comments
Thank you for your comments about the exposé of brutality and obscene torture some US soldiers used on(to Iraqi prisoners. when i heard about the shocking photographs which were aired on Friday, i simply was in denial that it took place and rationalized that whatever the woman who told me said was mistaken and confused, another neighbor said it may've been taken from Guantonamo Bay where Terrorists are imprisoned. So i forgot about it until i saw the pictures for myself on "Scarborough Country" tonight on MSNBC. Again i was horrified that it was, indeed true and worse, sickened that Americans would do these atrocities to defenseless POWs.
Your above comments gave their despicable actions a kind of perspective for me. They are young men and women who have been deprived of normal social interactions and, IMO, sound like they "lost it." They need to be court-marshaled and punished.
However indefensible their actions were against the POWs they were responsible to guard, they did not appear to torture them physically, mutilate, nor deface them permanently, although humiliation is a serious offense, especially in the Arab world. This does not pallaite the disgrace done to everyone, especially our image, nor does it exonerate the people who perpetuated these dishonorable acts. They need to be prosecuted.
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Entry: palliate
Pronunciation: 'pa-lE-"At
Etymology: Middle English, from Late Latin palliatus, past participle of palliare to cloak, conceal, from Latin pallium cloak
Date: 15th century
1 : to reduce the violence of (a disease): ABATE
2 : to cover by excuses and apologies
3 : to moderate the intensity of
- pal·li·a·tion /"pa-lE-'A-sh&n/ noun
- pal·li·a·tor /'pa-lE-"A-t&r/ noun
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Posted by: brigitte at May 3, 2004 02:25 AM