Hearts & Minds

As I'm sure everyone else in the class would agree, I geniuinely enjoyed the documentary. It was raw, yet amazingly unbiased despite the subject of the Vietnam War being either black or white for every one who has some kind of knowledge about it. Mr. Miller pointed out a few times how unbiased it was, and I didn't think a documentary like that could really pull it off. There are so many things in Hearts and Minds that opened my eyes. It was definitely a mind blower to see teenage boys walking around on their butts moving their legs one by one because they were obviously too frail to walk. It was imperative to see the propaganda, the corrupt leaders, and the obvious mistakes that every single one of them made. There's a section of the movie where a man being interviewed points out that each leader at the time made atleast one lie in their speeches. This part honestly couldn't remind me any more of "there are weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq. Much like the person who commented before on Iraq, a large portion of the video reminded me of our current war situation. Ofcourse the wars are on much different scales, however, it is so scary to think that this war may turn in to the next Vietnam. According to politicians when we first declared war on Iraq, they predicted we would be in Iraq for five months. I'm sure we assumed the same with a small country like Vietnam, yet the destructive outcome was remarkable, and for what? American pride, the fact that we were attacked on 9/11 and all of a sudden every one felt united. Similar to after World War II when we won and the country felt all mighty and powerful. Look at the motives for these wars, doesn't the war in Iraq and "the fight on terrorism" sound just like "the fight against communism?" I was always against the war in Iraq because I genuinely do not see the point. However, it's so devastating to think that history could be repeating itself in a small yet wretched way.