War! What is it good for? | Winter Soldiers (1972)

Vietnam Veterans Against the War

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I grew up during the Vietnam war, participated in Love Ins and demonstrated on college campuses at the tender age of 16. A few of my friends were drafted, others became conscientious objectors and left for Canada. We were so naive as to the underpinnings of the deep state back then but the Stop the War movement took off because we knew war was horror.

—and then, how quickly most of us forgot. Hippies became Yuppies as the almighty dollar and the tarnished American dream netted most back into the fold. I still recall the heady feelings that my generation would be the one that would wake up the world only to watch the burst of euphoria turn to dust—as sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll quickly became the rebellion. Yes, yes, all by design as the movement became infiltrated just as any grassroots movement is today.

While watching this film I was struck by the young men's faces as they confessed to committing atrocities, such a harsh juxtaposition to young innocence that my heart bled once again. That the killing fields go on unabated across the world today I am forced to ask why this is so. Truly these are the times that try men's souls.

Watching today's patriotic Americans and spiritual warriors "honor the fallen" who fought for "our freedom and democracy" literally causes me to turn away from any voice that refuses to underline the fact that all wars are banker's wars. All wars use the young as cannon fodder, all wars are cruel viciousness. Until people stop obeying the trumpet call to arms in the name of false gods, the world will continue to propagate monsters in service to evil.

"The film, shot largely in black and white, features testimony by soldiers who participated in or witnessed atrocities in Vietnam: the killing of civilians, including children; mutilation of bodies; indiscriminate razing of villages; throwing prisoners out of helicopters; and other acts of cruelty towards Vietnamese civilians and combatants. Some participants also claimed that these acts reflected orders from higher-up officers. A number of soldiers are quoted stating that their military training failed to include instruction in the terms of the Geneva Convention, while others state that the dangers they faced as soldiers created an environment in which they regarded all Vietnamese as hostile "gooks" and stopped seeing them as human beings."