[Peace-discuss] SE Asia & SW Asia

[C. G. Estabrook]

		"The period that is always most difficult of
	access is the one that is just within living memory.
	Not yet written down, its primary sources often still
	inaccessible, it is at the disposal of fallible memory
	and prejudice. No generation is ever fair to its parents."
	
		--Rosemary Hill, quoted in Rashid Khalidi's
	important new book, "Sowing Crisis: The Cold War
	and American Dominance in the Middle East"

[On "News from Neptune/TV" tonight (7pm Fridays on cable ch. 6) I talked a bit 
about comparisons between the Vietnam War and the current war.  The contrasts 
are greater, and the discussion is difficult because 40 years of propaganda have 
covered over the real story.  Here Louis Proyect describes two films that do 
tell an accurate story of those days, FWIW today.  --CGE]

	March 20, 2009
	Hearts and Minds; FTA

Great news. Two of the outstanding documentaries of the Vietnam War era are now 
available, one in the theaters and the other on DVD. “Hearts and Minds” opens at 
the Cinema Village today and is not only the finest documentary of the period, 
but arguably the finest political documentary ever made. You can also order 
“FTA” from Netflix, a movie that both documents Jane Fonda and Donald 
Sutherland’s legendary challenge to Bob Hope’s UFO shows and the amazing 
response of active-duty GI’s who by 1971 were sick and tired of Hope’s cheesy, 
warmongering “entertainment”, and more importantly the war it cheered on.

Michael Moore goes even further than me. He calls Peter Davis’s “Hearts and 
Minds” the best movie ever and adds that it was the movie that inspired him to 
pick up a camera. Indeed, you see what an influence it was on Moore and 
indirectly on so many other documentary film-makers who when they were imitating 
Moore were truly imitating Peter Davis. One of the brilliant insights of “Hearts 
and Minds” is to use footage of old newsreels and movies that reflected the Red 
Scare mentality that made the Vietnam War possible, a device used by Moore and 
so many other directors. There is nothing like a brief scene from a McCarthyite 
warhorse like “My Son John” to remind you how deep the paranoia ran in the 1950s 
and remained enough of a force to allow people like LBJ to sell the war to the 
American people.

The title “Hearts and Minds” is an ironic commentary on LBJ’s assurances that 
“The ultimate victory will depend on the hearts and minds of the people who 
actually live there.”

Using interviews with people on both sides of the debate, Davis reminds us of 
how deep the divide over Vietnam was. The pro-war personalities were both 
frightening and pathetic, including the mother and father of a Harvard graduate 
who died in Vietnam. While the father says that his son’s sacrifice was 
necessary to uphold American stature overseas, the mother idly plays with a 
model jet fighter.

It was the pilot of such a fighter who looms largest in Davis’s movie as a 
symbol of the madness of war. We see a welcome home parade in Linden, New Jersey 
for George Coker, a bomber pilot who was shot down over Vietnam and spent over 6 
years in a prison camp. Once he returns, he makes the lecture circuit telling 
schoolchildren and their mothers how important it is to defeat Communism. When a 
student asks what Vietnam was like, he answers that except for the people, it 
was very pretty. He thanks the mothers for their harsh discipline at home which 
helped him become a warrior. They were scarier to him than the “gooks” who 
imprisoned him.

Davis also allows prominent government officials to explain why they supported 
the war, including Walt Rostow who was the Paul Wolfowitz of his day. Rostow can 
barely conceal the contempt for the interviewers who have the nerve to ask him 
whether the war was defendable. By 1974, when the movie was made, the war was 
obviously going bad for the USA, thus making Rostow all the more compellingly 
peevish.

On the antiwar side, Daniel Ellsberg is powerful and lucid as might be expected. 
Coming from a background similar to Coker’s, Ellsberg is just one among 
thousands of establishment figures who grew to oppose the war, even at the risk 
of prison.

But the most moving parts of the movie are the interviews with the Vietnamese 
who share their losses of either property or loved ones with the interviewers. 
For those who are too young to remember Vietnam or who want to be reminded of 
how courageous its people were in the face of overwhelming military superiority, 
“Hearts and Minds” is a must.

...

The letters “FTA” stand for “Fuck the Army” and were also used by the antiwar 
movement to mean “Free the Army”. Both usages are found liberally in this 1972 
movie that tracks Jane Fonda and company across the Pacific Rim as they perform 
for adoring GI and local audiences.

In an 20 minute extra on the DVD, we learn that the revue came out of a 
suggestion made by antiwar medic Howard Levy who believed that a corrective to 
Bob Hope’s gung-ho shows was needed.

The skits can be described as a mixture of old-time vaudeville and agit-prop 
that sends up the military after the fashion of “MASH”. Since Donald Sutherland 
had starred in the 1970 movie, he was a natural for the FTA revue. Jane Fonda 
had already become one of the most prominent antiwar figures in the U.S., along 
with Mohammed Ali and Dr. Benjamin Spock. Both are fascinating to watch as they 
wring laughter and applause from the enlisted men.

But the most amazing part of the movie is the interviews with the soldiers 
themselves who have reached the point of open rebellion, even to the point of 
wearing their hair long and growing beards. It was obvious that several years of 
massive demonstrations in the U.S. had emboldened soldiers to challenge their 
superiors in one way or another. When they are in Japan, the performers hook up 
with the sailors on the aircraft carrier Constellation who had circulated a 
petition demanding that it withdraw from the war. It was signed by nearly 1500 
crewmen!

FTA was released in July 1972 and shown at selected theaters around the country, 
but in less than a week it was pulled from distribution. That same month Jane 
Fonda went to Hanoi. The movie is now being shown for the first time since 1972 
largely as a result of the efforts of David Ziegler, the director of the very 
find “Sir, No Sir“.

“FTA” is not to be missed.

http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/