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I downloaded and watched Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket the other day.
Not a movie one watches<br>
with the family unless you want Alice and Ellie pacing the hallways
singing salty Duckworth chants<br>
about estimations of Inuit molecular energies but a great movie
nonetheless.<br>
<br>
I had seen the movie before back in the 80's and found resonance with
the anti-war message<br>
but hadn't thought about it much beyond that. The internet provides
access to a lot of info.<br>
<br>
I found out that the movie was based on a book "The Short-Timers" by
Gustav Hasford.<br>
I find out that Gus is dead but one of his relatives maintains a
website about him and<br>
his stuff, like the original script for Full Metal Jacket and other
triviabilia. <br>
Hasford's books are out of print, but they are all available online at
his website.<br>
<br>
<a href="http://www.gustavhasford.com/home.htm">http://www.gustavhasford.com/home.htm</a><br>
<br>
"The Phantom Blooper" is a sequel to "The Short Timers" and has some
very interesting<br>
quotations and insights. Hasford thought that his books would become
popular<br>
after the success of the movie, and he could use the books as a
platform for <br>
dissemination of his ideas, but that popularity never materialized.
"The Phantom<br>
Blooper" is laced with pithy quotables.<br>
<br>
<a href="http://www.gustavhasford.com/phantom.html">http://www.gustavhasford.com/phantom.html</a><br>
<br>
<b><font face="Book Antiqua">"<i>Chien Si My</i>,
why do your armymen go ten thousand miles from home to live a helluva
life
and to die on this land? This country is not yours. We do no
harm to your homeland. Why have you come here to kill our men and
women and destroy our homeland?"</font></b>
<br>
<b><font face="Book Antiqua"> I don't know what to
say.</font></b>
<br>
<b><font face="Book Antiqua"> The printer continues:
"You cannot defeat us. You do not even know who we are. You
cannot even see us. Your country lives inside a dream and tries to
kill anything outside of the dream, but we live in the real world, so
you
cannot kill us. We have fought for twenty years and we will fight
on until weare victorious, until we have freedom. Just as your
forefathers
did two hundred years ago. Uncle Ho began the Vietnamese Declaration
of Independence by quoting the American Declaration of Independence:
'All men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with
certain unalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness.' American armymen no longer fight to protect
their liberty but to steal ours. <i>Chien Si My,</i> how did your
great and heroic country lose its greatness and allow itself to be
taken
over by gangsters?"</font></b>
<br>
<br>
*<br>
Hasford also wrote a letter to the LA Times on the 5th anniversary of
the Vietnam War- here is an excerpt:<br>
<br>
<b><font face="Book Antiqua">...Hawks hate the Vietnam
veterans for being a candy-ass who couldn't get the job done; those
World
War II boys won their war and didn't whine about how tough it was,
either.
Doves hate the Vietnam veteran because, in their view, each and every
one
routinely slaughtered helpless civilians, especially babies.</font></b>
<br>
<b><font face="Book Antiqua"> America's breast is
a milkless stone, and she demands heroes from her sons. A recent
Harris poll shows that 63% of the American people feel that Vietnam
veterans
"were made suckers, having to risk their lives in the wrong place at
the
wrong time." Vietnam veterans probably will in fact go down in history
as "suckers," but we fall from glory alongside the nation that bred us,
because a country that degrades, stigmatizes and humiliates its young
for
committing the heinous crime of steadfast loyalty can no longer be
trusted
or taken seriously by anyone. Even animals protect their young.</font></b>
<br>
<b><font face="Book Antiqua"> What have I learned
about Vietnam from the federal government? I have learned, for one
thing, that politics is a ballet of devils, and that politicians, with
paper roses falling out of their mouths, cannot conceal the blood from
distant wounds that stains their neckties--but they do try, and
millions
do listen and believe, and choose not to see.</font></b>
<br>
<b><font face="Book Antiqua"> Vietnam, in my opinion,
never ended. Peace is only a continuation of hypocrisy by other means,
just as Watergate, for example, was a continuation of Vietnam by other
means.</font></b>
<br>
<b><font face="Book Antiqua"> Now, five years after
the last American soldier left the soil of Vietnam, the sum of our
added
knowledge is small. Smug in our apathy, few of us would take time
to admit that today's problems might in some way be related to the war
in Vietnam.</font></b>
<br>
<b><font face="Book Antiqua"> Our refusal to face
our Vietnam experience honestly has meant that the national nightmare
of
Vietnam continues to poison this country's sense of itself, and that
refusal
postpones the needed reckoning with our own dark history as well.</font></b>
<br>
<b><font face="Book Antiqua"> Today, I talk to the
19-year-old children who will soon be dead in the Oil Wars (to them
Vietnam
is some kind of Chinese breakfast food), and their face-value
acceptance
of what the government has defined as their patriotic duty puts a cold
chord of fear and helplessness into my gut that is not unlike Daniel
Ellsberg's
response to the death of Robert Kennedy--total impotence in the face of
unbridled ruthlessness.</font></b>
<br>
<b><font face="Book Antiqua"> Recently I have been
investigating the possibilities of living in Australia. Perhaps
someday
the survivors of America will come back and will build log cabins in
the
streets. At least, as Hemingway said, it's pretty to think so.</font></b>
<br>
<b><font face="Book Antiqua"> Meanwhile, I ask you
to join me in celebrating the fifth anniversary of the final withdrawal
of the United States from Southeast Asia with a degree of pageantry and
excitement comparable to that we all enjoyed during Vietnam Veterans'
Week--by
popping open a cold can of beer and raising a toast: "Here's to the
good old days, when we knew who our enemies were and were sanctioned by
society to deal with them accordingly. Here's to the good old days."</font></b>
<br>
<b><font face="Book Antiqua"> Goodbye, America.
And goodbye to Vietnam and the friends who died for nothing.</font></b>
<br>
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