FYB'08: Chapter 1 - The Myth of War

We demonize the enemy so that our opponent is not longer human. We view ourselves, our people, as the embodiment of absolute goodness. Our enemies invert our view of the world to justify their own cruelty. In most mythic wars this is the case. Each side reduces the other to objects -eventually in the form of corpses.

(Hedges, War Is a Force p.21)

Stories

The Guardian: The Truth About Jessica (May 15, 2003)
Jessica Lynch became an icon of the war. An all-American heroine, the story of her capture by the Iraqis and her rescue by US special forces became one of the great patriotic moments of the conflict. It couldn't have happened at a more crucial moment, when the talk was of coalition forces bogged down, of a victory too slow in coming.

Movies that Glamorize War

300 (2006) USA 117min. Directed by Zach Snyder. Stars Gerard Butler.
When the ambitious King Xerxes of Persia invades Greece with his huge army to extend his vast slave empire, the brave Ling Leonidas brings his personal body guard army composed of three hundred warriors to defend the passage of Thermopylae, the only way by land to reach Greece. Using courage and the great battle skill of his men, he defends Thermopylae until a treacherous Greek citizen tells King Xerxes a secret goat passage leading to the back of Leonidas's army. Meanwhile, his wife Queen Gorgo of Sparta tries to convince the council to send the Spartan army to fight against the Persians. (imdb)

Pearl Harbor (2001) USA 183min. Directed by Michael Bay.
Set during the time of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, two friends are caught up in the events that draw the United States into World War II. One of them enlists with the U.S. Army Air Corps and the other flies for the British Royal Air Force, but they both find themselves in love with the same woman.

Top Gun (1986) USA 110min. Directed by Tony Scott. Stars Tom Cruise.
Maverick is a hot pilot. When he encounters a pair of MiGs over the Persian Gulf, his wingman is clearly outflown and freaks. On almost no fuel, Maverick is able to talk him back down to the Carrier. When his wingman turns in his wings, Maverick is moved up in the standings and sent to the Top Gun Naval Flying School. There he fights the attitudes of the other pilots and an old story of his father's death in combat that killed others due to his father's error. Maverick struggles to be the best pilot, stepping on the toes of his other students and in a different way to Charlie, a civilian instructor to whom he is strongly attracted. (imdb)

Missing in Action (1984) USA 101min. Directed by Joseph Zito. Stars Chuck Norris.
Colonel James Braddock is an American officer who spent seven years in a North Vietnamese POW camp, then escaped 10 years ago. After the bloodiest war, Braddock accompanies a government investigation team that goes to Ho Chi Minh City to check out reports of Americans still held prisoner. Braddock gets the evidence then travels to Thailand, where he meets Tuck, an old Army buddy turned black market kingpin. Together, they launch a mission deep into the jungle to free the American POWs from General Trau. (imdb)

First Blood aka Rambo (1982) USA 94min. Directed by Ted Kotcheff. Stars Sylvester Stalone.
Rambo is a disoriented Vietnam Vet. He is hitchhiking from town to town to see friends from the war. A sheriff tries to make him leave town and when he refuses, arrests him for vagrancy. While in jail, a deputy takes delight in abusing him. Rambo escapes showing his old Vietnam fighting skills and takes to the woods as the sheriff and deputies try and find him in his element. Things get out of hand as Colonel Trautman Rambo's old commander appears to shed light on the situation. (imdb)

Objective Burma! (1945) USA 142min. Directed by Raoul Walsh. Stars Errol Flynn.
A group of men parachute into Japanese-occupied Burma with a dangerous and important mission: to locate and blow up a radar station. They accomplish this well enough, but when they try to rendezvous at an old air-strip to be taken back to their base, they find Japanese waiting for them, and they must make a long, difficult walk back through enemy-occupied jungle. (imdb)

TOP

On the Glorification

Operation Hollywood (2004) France 90min Directed by Emilio Pacull.
The long time cooperation between Hollywood and Pentagon explored.
The American military forces has a long tradition of cooperation with the movie industry. Movie studios can save millions of dollars by securing use of military stock footage, equipment and manpower. But there will only be cooperation if the scripts are depicting the armed forces in a favorable way. The most realistic and successful war movies has generally been made without the military's support.
"You must glorify war in order to get the public to accept the fact that you're going to send their sons and daughters to die" The inside story of the cozy relationship between big box office American war movies and the Pentagon

Operation Hollywood: Review (Mother Jones) September 20, 2004.
To keep the Pentagon happy, some Hollywood producers have been known to turn villains into heroes, remove central characters, change politically sensitive settings, or add military rescues to movies that require none. There are no bad guys in the military.
Gung Ho Culture: Hollywood War Movies: Propaganda Dressed as Entertainment (Radical Left) September 4, 2006.
Well, we've known the rules. We've known them since Errol Flynn liberated Burma without any help from British, Australian or New Zealand forces. Churchill and a few Diggers may have been upset, but the fact is when it comes to Hollywood only the good guys win and, since we're playing with their toys, those good guys must inevitably be Americans. Never let the absurdities of history get in the way of a box-office blockbuster.

Presidents & Notable Figures' Quotes about War

Revolutionary War

"To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace."

United States President George Washington First Annual Address to Congress
January 8, 1790.

"War - An act of violence whose object is to constrain the enemy, to accomplish our will."

Often attributed to United States President George Washington

"There is nothing so likely to produce peace as to be well prepared to meet the enemy."

United States President George Washington

"There was never a good war or a bad peace."

Benjamin Franklin

"The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government."

United States President Thomas Jefferson

Civil War

Force is all-conquering, but its victories are short-lived.

United States President Abraham Lincoln

"The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can, and keep moving on."

United States President Ulysses S. Grant

"The Southern rebellion was largely the outgrowth of the Mexican War. Nations, like individuals, are punished for their transgressions. We got our punishment in the most sanguinary and expensive war of modern times."

United States President Ulysses S. Grant
Written in the 1880s as Grant reflected on a war in which he fought in the 1840s.

"If I had had my way, this war would never have been commenced; If I had been allowed my
way this war would have ended before this, but we find it still continues; and we must believe that He permits it for some wise purpose of his own, mysterious and unknown to
us; and though with our limited understandings we may not be able to comprehend it, yet we cannot but believe, that he who made the world still governs it."

United States President Abraham Lincoln
October 26, 1862 Reply to Eliza Gurney

"War at the best, is terrible, and this war of ours, in its magnitude and in its duration, is one of the most terrible."

United States President Abraham Lincoln
June 16, 1864 Speech at Philadelphia

"Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation
survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came ....
Fondly do we hope -- fervently do we pray -- that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away."

United States President Abraham Lincoln
March 4, 1865 Inaugural Address

WWI

"It must be a peace without victory...Victory would mean peace forced upon the loser, a victor's terms imposed upon the vanquished. It would be accepted in humiliation, under duress, at an intolerable sacrifice and would leave a sting, a resentment, a bitter memory upon which terms of peace would rest, not permanently, but only as upon quicksand. Only a peace between equals can last."

United States President Woodrow Wilson
addressing the United States Senate on January 22, 1917

Once lead this people into war and they will forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance.

Woodrow Wilson

The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty.

Woodrow Wilson, Speech to Congress, Apr. 2, 1917

"Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die."

United States President Herbert Hoover

WWII

"More than an end to war, we want an end to the beginning of all wars - yes, an end to this brutal, inhuman and thoroughly impractical method of settling the differences between governments."

Franklin D. Roosevelt

"I have seen war. I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded. I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed. I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war."

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt
at in address at Chautauqua, NY - August 14, 1936

"On this tenth day of June 1940, the hand that held the dagger has struck it into the back of its neighbor"

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt

"Democracy alone, of all forms of government, enlists the full force of men's enlightened will...It is the most humane, the most advanced, and, in the end, the most unconquerable of all forms of human society. The democratic aspiration is no mere recent phase of human history...We...would rather die on our feet than live on our knees."

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt
in his Third Inauguration Speech, January 20, 1941

"The absence of war is not peace."

United States President Harry S. Truman

Korea

"Never before has this nation been engaged in mortal combat with a hostile power without
military objective, without policy other than restrictions governing operations, or indeed
without even formally recognizing a state of war."

General Douglas MacArthur

"In the simplest terms, what we are doing in Korea is this: We are trying to prevent a third world war."

President Truman

"America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination and unbeatable determination to do the job at hand."

President Truman

"I'm going to fight hard. I'm going to give them hell ."

President Truman

"Responding to the question “Mr. President Senator [Kenneth] Wherry of Nebraska made the comment that the blood of our soldiers in Korea was on the shoulders of Secretary of State [Dean] Acheson. Would you care to comment on the accuracy of that remark?”:] I think that is a contemptible statement and beneath comment. . . . You can quote it verbatim."

President Harry S. Truman
Press conference comment August 17, 1950
Public Papers of the President, 1950

"We are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it."