In the last 20-minutes of a flight that brought me home from half way around the world the other day, I read about a movie called Stop-Loss and knew I had to see it as soon as I could. Not because it seemed to be an anti-war film. As related to the current war, I needed no help in that department. Not because I understood it to be grim and I dig grim. I think it was because -- as much as I thought I knew about how so many American families and their G.I. sons and brothers and fathers and distaffs were suffering in this war, I wasn't truly "feeling" it. Oh, I moaned to those who'd listen. And I "felt" it just the way I've felt about distant suffering all my life. You know what I mean -- a famine or natural catastrophe in some distant place on another continent, we're sorry, truly sorry, maybe we hurt for a moment, maybe even write a check in an effort to feel we've done something about it, but then we're just as likely to grab a nosh from the refrigerator on the way to bed and enjoy an untroubled sleep for the full night.
I've been there, done that, to coin a coinage. As I read about Stop-Loss I think the reason I had to see it as quickly as I could and did was the need to "feel" what so many American families at a considerable distance from so many of us are feeling as the war impacts them directly.
So what about Stop-Loss and its effect on me? I'm not fool enough to think any film, however great, gives the person who's seen it the right to think his experience equates to that of a participant in or victim of the action it portrays. But like any great film, and Stop-Loss is a great film, it can help the viewer to experience that "feeling," if only fleetingly. Stop-Loss did that for me. I feel as never before for the men and women fighting it and for their families.
During the Vietnam protest days there was an indelible photograph of a group of students lying on the track in front of a troop train. Where, I wonder, is my troop train?
"Where, I wonder, is my troop train?"
Prehaps it is here on this very blog or perhaps some other venu.The troop train is waiting for it's Conductor. Perhaps you can be it's Conductor.
All aboard...
I've seen it. It's not a perfect movie, but until a better one comes along this will do. Please go to see it, and please urge your representatives in Congress to see it as well.
I couldn't wait to see "Stop Loss" either. Then I attended a screening along with some of my old "Drinking Liberally" buddies.
While the movie at least addresses the issue of this Nation's "Back-door-draft" (disclosure: our youngest son spent the last 4 months of his Army service FOB- and COP-hopping in the Anbar Provice, under Stop-Loss) it does little beyond bringin the subject up.
Not that TV's a bad thing (ok it kinds sucks wind these days), and those parts of TV YOU'VE touched certainly caused its blue glare to shine a bit more smartly, but "Stop-Loss" smells more like something an MTV-director was stepping in and is revealing and revelant of pretty much nothing.
waiting for something REAL,
-T
Please tell the truth. Your blogs seem to be your life. And they are so wrong.
Truth ... and effective political action ... does not make headlines except those of its own making. When you are working to oppose a well-entrenched opponent that has its finger poised on the propaganda machine, you know that button is going to be mashed "like Pavlov's dog on Sunday morning."
But don't confuse what the propagandists say, for the truth. "Nobody." "Don't want to know." "Surrender." That's not truth. How do you know? Because it's much too easy to come by.
GWW
nor lose my mind,
to lose my taste for war,
and what it brings to Us.
I simply need to look around myself, and past myself, and my safe place,
To children down the street in care of grand mothers and fathers,
In loving stead of sergeants, corporals, and of captains who,
On our behalves are doing the work we hired them to do,
In place of joys, and times God had in mind for them to share,
With those precious ones
We the People can not replace,
Nor whose senses may repair.
Pray for us now.
Not all domestic bases during the Viet Nam era were accessible by airplanes and buses. It may be that some still aren't.
Aside from the movie, the protestors from that time under the leadership of Jerry Rubin and others always seemed to have some way to do something dramatic to bring out the reporters. It wouldn't have been out of character for one or more of them to find a train going to a base.
In the back of my memory, I vaugely recall a protestor (a young woman) being run over by a train when she either didn't or couldn't get out of the way fast enough. It could have been in the Oakland, CA area.
And we should not do foolish things such as give tax cuts during a time of war - if we think war is important, then we should vote for it - with our wallets - not require that it be paid for by our children.
Do you realize that Bush undoubtedly considers himself a multi-year Iraq war veteran? He served as "commander-in-chief" and had a lot of people saluting him and saying "Yes, Sir!"
Do you realize that all the neocons in governmental positions would undoubtedly qualify for your dream of serving the government for 1-2 years.
If you want to serve some time for Bush and company, go do it.
Acknowledge our mistakes, certainly. But also give credit for the good we do. That is why most soldiers are proud to to serve. In Iraq, Afghanistan, wherever they are called.
It's a rigged game you jingoists play.
It was the same way during Viet Nam. You were happy to lionize servicepeople when they could make nice props for your politics of aggression. But God forbid they should come home and turn on you, then they weren't part of the "majority" anymore; in fact, if anyone was guilty of the apocryphal "spitting on the troops", it was you warmongering flag-wavers... because once a soldier escaped the madness and had his eyes opened to the evil that is war, he was no good for your propaganda purposes.
You hosed those guys first, during the demonstrations; their uniforms didn't mean shit to you. They had turned on you, so they were no longer proud veterans. Now they were scum, as far as you were concerned.
This left you all those others who hadn't grown up yet, who were still drinking the Kool-Aid and shedding the blood for absolutely no reason whatsoever. Ergo, they were still "the majority", because the Ron Kovacses, in your view, no longer existed.
Nice little numbers game. Stuff it.
Your premise that we servicemen and women are disillusioned, brainwashed, or unable have perspective on our service is GROSSLY insulting and condescending. Your Hollywood notion that our armed services are a bunch of war hungry cowboys is insulting. True, war and combat is our profession. But saying that we're warmongerers is like saying that people who work for FEMA are praying for disaster.
I am merely sharing my experience as far as the opinions of soldiers are concerned. Take it or leave it.
I serve human beings in their hours of need.
More than their country does.
I'll agree to sympathize with military trooops and their families, but nothing more. And I will not lose any more rest over the plight of a particular group on the basis of a common nationality.
perpetual war. Embedded instead of free press, in fact the MIC bought heavily into the MSM.
No bad pictures, no shots of coffins or grieving families, no photo assays on the many and
severely wounded AND best of all, keep sending the same suckers over & over to limit the
number of families subjected to the war. Hell, just tell folk to go shopping, cut taxes for the
rich and borrow the fucking money from our natural competitors. The economy will tank but
catastrophes are just more opportunities for Privatization, Profiteering and Promulgation!!!
ST2P.
http://www.alternet.org/movies/81161/
P.S. - try reading the comments by vets on Stop Loss. The reviews are not positive as they re-create some of those old Viet Nam stereotypes. The film falls way short of what it could have been with a little more attention to verisimilitude.