• Twylarants said on Jan 31, 2008....

  My husband is a Vietnam vet. I don't know how old you are, but if you're young enough to consider the Vietnam war history, you should realize that, for some of us it was real life. I give you credit for your sensitivity and your humanity.  Of course what happens to innocents in time of war is tragic...and when you consider the reasons we go to war, it makes you sick.
  
  But, picture yourself in this scenario:
  It's the 60s. There is no cable tv, no internet...your world is a very, very small place compared to the present.
  You're 18, a recent graduate from a small high school in a small town.
  All you know about Vietnam is what you see on the 6 o'clock news while you're eating dinner on a tray table in the parlor with mom and dad, and maybe your little brother or sister. You can't even find Vietnam on a map.
  You're not going to college, most likely none of your friends are. Maybe you'll work in a factory with your dad, or in the little hardware store in town, or in the post office.
  Life's not to bad.  You have a girlfriend who helps you wash your old Chevy every Saturday, and at night you go to the drive-in and hang out with your friends.
  This was life in the 60s. Simple, slow...think "Happy Days" before Joanie loved Chachi.
  And then you get drafted.
  You're told you must leave the only life you've ever known to go and fight to stay alive in a strange country far away from the people you love...oh, and on top of that, you have to kill people. 
  Watch "The Deerhunter" again, but this time put yourself in the place of one of those young guys. Because that was real life in the 60s.  My husband has never been able to watch that movie.  He still has nightmares about Vietnam after 40 years.  Those boys...and they were boys, not trained fighting men...boys...didn't come home to parades as they did in WW2 or Korea.  They didn't come home to find their jobs waiting for them.  There were no government programs to help them deal with the trauma of killing innocents or being killed by "innocents".  They were spat upon, called "baby killers", shunned.  Some of them became drug addicts, alcoholics, homeless.
  
  Yeah, it's a pretty cool film, unless you lived it.
   

• seer said on Feb 01, 2008....

  Thank you, that was touching.
  
  I wasn't having a go at the soldiers.
  
  I've tried to write a response 4 times now.
  
  I guess what I'm trying to say is that its horrible, really, and I'm not blaming people like your huspand or my friends that have fought in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, I'm just saying its a shame, loss of life for no particular reason; and I was trying to get people to spare a thought about the other side, instead of the whole good VS evil thing that gets portrayed by Hollywood in a bizzare post-conflict propaganda (he who controls the past now controls the future - RATM)
  

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