It need not be yes, but that doesn't mean it ain't! For instance, Vietnam. There was a definite agenda to make it look like the cooks were justified when they spit on our Vets. Thankfully, Mel Gibson is about to put these morons in their place.
I posted this article on GWB the other day:
vny.com
This is another article on the subject
Vets hopeful about Vietnam War movie
By LOU MARANO
WASHINGTON, July 13 (UPI) -- With Paramount Pictures announcing "a wrap"
on the filming of a Mel Gibson war drama, Vietnam veterans are hopeful that,
for once, they won't be portrayed as racist monsters or befuddled dupes.
Gibson has the reputation of being one of the few socially conservative
stars in Hollywood. (Fiscally responsible libertarians are more common.) He
is a traditional Catholic who has eight children with his wife, Robyn, and
patriotism was the theme of "Braveheart" (1995) and "The Patriot" (2000).
Filmmaker Oliver Stone recently phoned this reporter to comment on my
story about his plans to make a movie about Bobbie Garwood, the only
American to have been convicted of collaborating with the enemy during the
Vietnam War. In the course of the conversation, Stone expressed his concern
that the Gibson movie might turn out to be a portrayal of Heroic Americans
in Combat --"John Wayne, right up the middle." Dare we hope to be so lucky?
In Stone's Oscar-winning "Platoon" (1986) and Stanley Kubrick's "Full
Metal Jacket" (1987), tremendous talent and artistry were employed to
reinforce the conventional wisdom. Hailed as "daring" at the time, Stone and
Kubrick recapitulated the position of elites on both sides of the Atlantic
that the U.S. effort to save 17 million South Vietnamese from communist
tyranny was neo-imperialist (and quite possibly racist) folly.
The implication was that anyone who allowed himself to be "complicit" in
such a horror was either immoral or stupid.
The Gibson movie, "We Were Soldiers," will be released next year,
Paramount publicist Susan Ciccone told United Press International. It is
based on the 1993 book "We Were Soldiers Once ... and Young: Ia Drang: The
Battle That Changed the War in Vietnam," by retired Army Lt. Gen. Harold G.
Moore -- then the aggressive commander of the 1st Battalion, 7th Air Cavalry
-- and Joe Galloway, the reporter who covered the battle for UPI.
Gibson plays Moore in the movie.
In 1998 the Army took the unusual step of awarding Galloway, a 24-year-old
civilian at the time of the fight, the Bronze Star for heroism for rescuing
wounded soldiers.
The Ia Drang operation of Nov. 14-18, 1965, was the first major engagement
between U.S. combat forces and North Vietnamese Army regulars. The first
phase, which involved Moore's 1st Battalion and supporting units in and
around Landing Zone X-Ray, was a success.
The second phase was a debacle. That's when the NVA ambushed the 2nd
battalion after its commander foolishly ordered his troops to walk through
six miles of woods and tall elephant grass from X-Ray to Landing Zone
Albany.
The movie does not deal with the Albany phase of the operation.
Longtime ABC newsman Jack Smith, now a California businessman, was a young
private first class in 2/7. His platoon was all but annihilated near LZ
Albany. His company suffered 93 percent casualties, with most of the wounded
crippled for life.
In three separate incidents, Smith was wounded in the head and both legs.
A North Vietnamese soldier, taking Smith for dead, lay down on top of him
and started to set up a machine gun before the NVA soldier was killed by
U.S. mortar fire.
In a phone interview, Smith said that the North Vietnamese had drawn the
correct lesson from the battle, but American military leaders had drawn the
false conclusion that they could defeat the NVA by grinding them down in
set-piece battles.
The first Air Cavalry Division was a huge experiment, Smith said. The Army
didn't know if helicopters or air mobility would work. "We killed five to 10
of them for every one of us."
The Seventh Cavalry, of course, was Gen. George Armstrong Custer's old
unit.
"Our conclusion was, 'My God! If we can inflict 10-to-1 casualties on
them, why, they'll quit and go home.' So let's start counting bodies. As
Custer did, let's troll around in the wilderness, and when they attack us,
we'll put an iron ring of artillery around the American force, and air
strikes, and we will kill the North Vietnamese as they are drawn like a moth
to a flame.
"No country can sustain casualties at that level for very long. In a year
or two, we'll have the light at the end of the tunnel, the North Vietnamese
will sue for peace, and we'll be out of there.'
"The North Vietnamese," Smith said, " drew a completely different
conclusion.
"Ten-to-one was acceptable for them." For them it was significant that
they killed more than 100 Americans, which would not look good in the New
York Times.
Smith characterized the communist strategy: "If we can keep this up for
three or four years, which we can, they'll go home just like the French
did."
North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh had given the French this warning in
1946: "For every one of you we kill, you will kill 10 of us -- and in the
end, you will grow tired." He applied the same principle to the Americans in
the late 1960s.
This does not mean that it was impossible to win the Vietnam War, only
that counting bodies was not sound military strategy.
Retired Major Ed "Too Tall" Freeman was a helicopter pilot who volunteered
to fly into Landing Zone X-Ray when others faltered. After more than 35
years, President Bush will award Freeman the Medal of Honor, America's
highest military decoration, at the White House on Monday morning.
In a phone interview from his home in Boise, Idaho, Freeman told UPI that
he had seen the script of "We Were Soldiers."
The only thing he had objected to was the recurring use of profanity on
military radios, "which did not happen." This former communications officer
can confirm that one did not use such language on the tactical net.
Freeman was concerned that this Hollywood anachronism might hurt the film
by causing it to be given a more restrictive rating than it otherwise would
be given. He hoped that the profanity would be edited out in the final cut. |
