The John Wayne myth and the realities of real war.

[ginnyinWI]

On this Memorial Day weekend, I've seen the usual old war movies in my TV listings. And I thought, you know, that's where the trouble begins. We watch these old war and Western movies from childhood on up , and buy into it--the whole "tough guy goes out alone against all odds and wins because he has a good and true heart" kind of stuff. As long as he's tough and brave and never flinches from a fight, he ends up winning--and then the big "The End" sign goes up and everyone has a warm fuzzy feeling in their heart. There's never an insurgency or a mess to clean up afterwards--that stuff just isn't interesting or important. Let somebody else worry about that--we're busy cheering for our hero.

And you know what? I'll bet * learned about war this same way. His idol, Ronald Reagan learned to project this Tough Guy personality from the inside, being an actor himself and starring in just those kinds of roles. He brought it to the presidency and the people just ate it all up. Tough Guy president faces down the Evil Empire and prevails! Yay!

Chimp wanted to be a president like Reagan--or like Reagan's image of him presented. The authors of Hubris pointed out that * thought of Reagan's Evil Empire speech and proceeded to call out the "Axis of Evil". Of course he and his people were far too short-sighted and incompetent to do what they tried to do--to get a similar capitulation in the Middle East like Reagan's supposed ability to make the Berlin Wall come down. (We know it was due to fall anyway--he just touched it with his little finger and it fell of its own weight.)

It's not only the chimp, it's all the people in this country who have never seen real war, only the glorified John Wayne kind. So they get to be 18 and decide that it would be a noble thing to sign up and go and fight one like that. They reason that if their president needs them, it's for a just and noble cause. I'll leave it to others to estimate how many find out differently once they are there.

So many of the old war movies from the 40s and 50s are either blatant propaganda or are the glorified and idealized memories of veterans who seek to make war make sense. Sometimes war is justified, but we have to be very careful not to apply the reasons for a just war to just any old war that any old president decides that he wants so that he can be a "war president" and show up the old man. A president who doesn't care about anybody more than himself and his legacy, and has convinced himself that he's right and everyone else in the country is dead wrong.

So let's not watch Hollywood war movies anymore, and stop letting our kids soak in all of that B.S. about the glories of war. Let them watch "Saving Private Ryan" or "Flags of Our Fathers" and other films which show us the bravery, yes but also bloody death and defeat--the flip side of the coin.
No more "The Longest Day" with John Wayne in his freshly pressed uniform charging over the hill, leading his men to victory. And there are dozens and dozens more of these sanitized war movies.

My nephew loved to watch stuff like "Mr. Roberts" with all its frat-boy towel-snapping cameraderie. Now he's in the Air National Guard and I worry he'll be the next to be shipped overseas if this war doesn't end soon. All for a dream. I wonder if he sees the difference yet. I wonder if he still buys into the myth.

[PCIntern]

1. My Dad of blessed memory

was a veteran of the Pacific Theater in WWII. when the temperature would rise above 95 degrees here, he would start feeling the symptoms of his malaria and then, and only then, would he talk about the war. He once told me that they would show these Hollywood war movies to the assembled G.I.'s and they would howl with laughter at the machinations of the John Wayne types.

Especially, he once told me, when they would charge over the hill in the movie with guns blazing. He said that they'd sooner shoot themselves than do that, for you could lie out there for hours, mortally wounded and in agony. In all these flicks, ever notice all the medics carrying freshly-shot soldiers back to get patched up? Wanna bet?

[MikeNearMcChord]

2. A movie among many anti-war, I recommend

is All Quite On The Western Front, with Lew Ayres. As a matter of fact Ayres became a pacifist and would pay a price for his anti-war stance.

[PCIntern]

3. Yes, and we're all paying one price or another...

Either you take an anti-war stance and send your kid to Canada if there's a draft, assuming that you can get him or her across the border AND that they won't ship them right back to a stockade in Leavenworth, OR you take a pro-war stance and buy a cemetery plot with a 'nice view' for the kid to return to.

War exacted terrible tolls on everyone in this country, and it's only the fools who think that we're getting away with this war scot-free.

[LBJDemocrat]

4. I think more Americans have seen Saving Private Ryan than The Longest Day

I don't think blood and gore is the issue.

You want the citizenry to have a realistic view of war? Then conscript every able-bodied American for a few years after adulthood. Just like the Israelis and Germans do.

[ginnyinWI]

5. it's also about thinking that any war is a just war

I would have thought Vietnam would have set us straight on that score--that wars can be ordered by flawed presidents and continued by even more flawed ones, and that they aren't always just. But people forget. And people still think that those in authority are somehow smarter and better than they are--especially the ones who don't have as much education and experience. Once I had my own college degree I realized that these are all just people like me, not some super-human gods who know better than I do who make decisons based on selfishness, greed, and other less desireable motives.

[EST]

6. Just like * , the facts just don't support the myth and the perception.

Yesterday, the western channel on dish had a series of John Wayne movies, titled "One hundred years of John Wayne" or some such equally significant bullshit.
They had people on there enthusing about Waynes "patriotism," never mind the fact that he was a draft dodger in the supposed "great war," world war two. He was no a patriot, electing to pursue his own private fortunes, although he played one in the movies.

People are, indeed, idiots...uninformed, willfully ignorant, self deluded idiots.