From: eugene@wilbur.nas.nasa.gov (Eugene N. Miya)
Subject: Re: Did We Lose?
Organization: NAS, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 92 01:21:58 GMT

I can't remember if it was in alt.war or rec.arts.movies someone once
asked why there were no war movies about the Vietnam War.  And it struck
me, rather than note to one (Wayne' Green Beret) or two, it occurred to me
it was because there was a greater effort than at anytime in movie history
to make ANTI-war movies.

War kind a got redefined a bit when we developed nuclear weapons.

Before pre-WWIII, we had these glorious films about victorious battles,
generals, etc.  We even had movies about losses.  There were fewer ANTI-war
films like All Quiet on the Western Front.  Why Zanuck made The Longest Day
specifically as an anti-war film (why it's in B&W for instance), and
I sat there as my Dad looked at the Utah Beach landing and said, he didn't
quite remember it that way.  [Dad was raising me not to fight in Vietnam,
he was looking forward for me to fight WWIII.]

The purpose of war films is two fold (with subfolds): one is to make you
forget the horror in war and the second is to pump you up for battle
(which reminds me of the alt.war poster who once said he liked war because
it made him sharp).  Face it: war ain't glamorous.

Korea had a few more anti-war films, but nothing like Vietnam (which I include
MASH as a film of this period).  War is highly uncertain.  It isn't
deterministic (the Gulf war is highly exceptional).

Subject: Re: Did We Lose?

Yes.  Sort of and definitely.
Frankly everybody loses in some war.
We lost territory in the conventional sense, but in a way we came out
ahead with losing few guys.  But I think territory lost meaning (again)
because of nukes.  I think we lost sight that the people we were fighting
were doing the same thing the revolutionaries did in 1776. [It is easily
possible to say more on this, but it's a digression. A classic argument.]
I think the Vietnamese people lost a lot more (more than land or people,
these are consequences of self-determination).

You the people have to decide what wars we get into and the ones we don't
(in particular the latter: easy to beat up on weak nations).  Wars don't seem
as clear cut these days.  Just about every war (Iraq: when did we cut aid
off? Yugo? do we want to send troops in?  Vietnam: if 500K wasn't enough,
would 1M have helped?)  We have to set our priorites and if we value
human life and separately freedoms (as the US Army now says "Freedom isn't
free" okay then what's the cost?).

The press

I can remember during that time growing up as many positive statements as
well as negative statements during the war.
We were there for the potential of off shore oil.  I remember this.
In a way, the press, especially television, has shown to be one of the greatest
deterrents.  The press like a computer net is just a media.  And I think the
big thing the military learned is that the media must be controlled
(witness the "failure" of the US to go into Angola shortly after Vietnam
[to Henry K.'s dismay], what happened in the Falklands (other countries
learned from our mistakes, Grenada, Panama, and Beruit [where the media was
out of their control]).  So if you want more wars control the media.
If you want to deter them, keep the press free and live with it.
If "right" is on your side, the press will understand.  You won't be able
to stand the scrutiny otherwise.

Two years ago marked 15 years since the end of fighting and it occurred to
me that I was first conscious about my place in the world, growing up,
when my Dad was 15 years after he stopped fighting in WWII.  And we have
a generation who didn't grow up and see these "old" guys who went there
and grew up there (had a few great times as well as a few silent tragedies).
The question that really faces is is not whether we lost or not, but
whether or not we really seek to avoid and prevent future wars.
Maybe not.  But I will tell you this, when you are fighting, you sure as hell
want to survive (much less win), and you will use just about any means
possible to do it, cause I know if I had been there, I probably would have
pulled the trigger on suspects as much as anyone else would have.

And remember we didn't nuke the place in 1967 (I can remember asking why
we didn't use Polaris missiles with conventional warheads back then [I recently
saw a real one at LLNL (developed @) recently] before I learned about CEPs).
If war isn't horrible enough for you, you might visit Dade county a short
while (it lacks the dead and wounded).  We prepare for future wars or
we can try to avoid them by various means.

--eugene miya, NASA Ames Research Center, eugene@orville.nas.nasa.gov
  Acting Associate Editor, Software and Publication Reviews
  Scientific Programming
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