upsetting to veterans

Rating: Null/10 (18 April 2000)

Warning possible spoilers in here. I went into this movie full of hope. When I was in Bosnia I saw up close just how dangerous "peace keeping missions" can be. The ROE is very ambigious and often times can cost you your life since you have to do almost everything but load your enemys gun for them, before you can fire. So I expected to see some reality about what our soldiers are doing right now in foriegn countries. What I saw was a farce. When Jackson first flys in you see his helicopter fly over snipers on the rooftops. His door gunners should have dropped them the second he saw them firing. You have allegedly highly trained soldiers who cant seem to identify where fire is coming from. Also the very first thing you learn in basic is when someone shoots at you, you take cover not keep running and not even looking where your attackers are. The worst part was the common sense factor. According to Standard ROE you can return fire. But only as last resort if you have to fire towards civilians. Imagine if when bank robbers take hostages and fire at cops the cops just took them all out. Same concept . Also Jackson had his troops on the high ground. If he pulls back to where they originally entered the roof then he can take out the snipers since those are the ones that killed his men then he can deploy and try to take out the armed people with well placed shots. You are never told to just fire indiscriminately into a crowd. You are supposed to take well placed shots. I know this is nit picking but that is what this movie should be all about. Our soldiers are going through things everyday and people should understand that. We sacrifice our safety trying to help others and then when things go ugly people want to point fingers. But instead of me being able to symphatize with jackson I wound up hating him. He showed no remorse whatsoever. That is just wrong because no soldier enjoys having to kill. That is just our job. He was wrong and there is no other way around it. He should have known better then to open up on the crowd, this was a peace mission and as such tactics that work in combat have to be tweaked just a little. I am just so mad because people can take this movie and point at the military in a bad light.This movie just left me with no one to root for. Jackson was wrong. The politicians were politicians. The other Marines tried to hang jackson out to dry. Good Idea but to many holes for something that has this much importance. Feel free to contact me to discuss further.