Graffiti in the US officers' club in Hanau, West Germany — anti-war protest was widespread and woridwide
WHERE
NEED
Tales of 'Nam
The Vietnamese war has become big box-office business.
Platoon, Full Metal Jacket and
Hamburger Hill are packing local cinemas. Newsagents report high demand for the serialised story of the war,
Nam. And all of this is a pale
British reflection of the appetite of the US publie for tales of the apocalypse.
Here, STEVE ROBERTS examines the Vietnam syndrome' and its cultural representations.
40
HARVEY'SSWALD
NOW THAT WE REALY нім?
JOHNSON forin the basis of the Vietnam syndrome' troops an combat duty in Indo China disabilities.
ang ed from an eventual majority of Us poople
Vietnamese:
idea of linkage"
tbe Ogaden by Somalia in 1978.
ministration
1979 there were
TNES
FOR.
EX PRESIDENT
THE BARE statistins of tus costs in the war
Twenty years ago there were 161,000 US those who fought, 57,000 died and 154,000 were wounded, many with the most appallbrutal
These figures underlay the political impact of the anti-war movement and the passive support it recciv-
Vietnam:
But the 'syndromc" also applies to the succession of defears suffered hy e5 im producing perialism following the fall of Saigon and the reonification of the country, not on terms dictaten by the W5, bur by the victorious
Aid provided to UNITA forces in Angola was smashed by the audacious military intervention of Cuba This breakdown of the
- that the USSR would restrain its allies li exchange for deicate.
was further undermined by the military assistance provided both by Cuba and the advisury"
USSR to Ethiopia to ward off the invasion of
Defeat piled ou defeat fur the Carter administration. In April 1978 and January training ultimate were the in
Overturns
Afghanistan and Iran respecticly, transfor ming the situation in the Middle Fast. The year culminated with the Nicaraguan and Grenadan revolutions.
The detente policies initiated by Nixon and Kissinger, and continued by Carter and Brzezinski until 1979, were the nasnalty not only of a faulty analysin — thar the USSR could control its assumec allies — bur also of the new relation of forces ereated
The new doctrine as the Carter adminisration moved into the '80c was bor-
USSR militarily: and economically, in an attempt co explode con: tradictions that were assumed to be ready to ripen within Soviet society
But the remilitarisation drive launched by Carter was dwarfed by thar minared by the Reagan administration: Arms: expenditure was bumped up immediatel by thirteen per cent in 1992, with a nearly ten per cent risc projected for the next five years
Twenty five years alier Kennedy sent his
Stearns to beel up thr military capacity of the Diem regime Reagan sent similar missions to provide logistics and for his Honduran pruxies. The use Sf direct intervention was witnessed in the first roll-back - against
SOCIALIST QUTLOOK no:4 November/December 1987
To be sure the policy has met with internal opposition. The movement against intervenLion in the Central America is nut insignifi cant. Bur has Reagan succeeded in croding the spirit against new Vietnams?
Part of the answer can be found in the way in which the history of the Vietnamese in tervention bas been treated io recent years. The wave of films abour the experiener in itself is not a new phenomenon.
During the build up of the American presence the light at the cod of the tunnel' was kept burning by John Wayne und the Greet Beret. Defeat was marked by films porthe bitter and olen psychopathic veterans returning home, played by new actors like Dennis Hopper and Jon Vuigl
However, atremprs in come to grips with the war itself found themselves taking cover in demonology (the sadistic and twisted NIt soldiers of The Deerhunter) or in the magical realism of Apocalypse Noz:
The mond of interventionisna utilised thr familiar and emotive totem of Us forcign
Americur captive. Starting from real-le campaigns around Llose missing in action from the Viernamese war (onr of the masons for denying aid to Vietnam), to the 1iS embassy hoscages in Tehran, to the possible danger" to the US students at the Grenadan medical school, a new wave of filte sprouted with Sylvester Stallone and Chuck Connors haunting the jungles of the Far Fas in scarch of chose enslaver by COMEHUAIRI
The reaction to these films was switt, fore scen in the debate of what memorial should be crected to the L'S victims of the war in Washington. As against the Pentagun who pressed for a conventional commemoration to the valour of those who died for a greater good, veterans associations pushed tbe other way. The compromise was a single monolitic stab engraved sumply with the names of the scidies who died, This is the spirit which informs the current crop of films - the cult if thr comminn soldin.
The theme of the poor bloody infanriy has: always been contradietary: amultaneously carries an impacit or explicit condemnation of the motives and strategy of governments and military high commande, while celebrating the bravery Of those who fight, le can allow a partisan of either lelt or right to see a film like Platoon and appland it.
Takewise with Stanley Kubrick's Film Foll Metal Jacket currenily grea popularity on general release, with a record from irs sound track riding high in the charts The film is split into rwo parts. To the first hall you accompany a caw squad of recruits through their training as marines They are brutalised. You are brutalised, A turnan conversation does not occur amril twehty minutes neo the film. Sex becomes togething you do with vour tille. Kubrick prods his audience in the chest asking: would you have been able to resist this conditioning?' fully ledged grunts" then find ternselves hurled into the Ter offensive of 1968. Rut it is a curiously one-dimensional war. Them is mo drug-taking soldiers, no "fragging" of officers, the rise of the peace movement in rhe Us% and internacunally is never mentioned.
Major contradictions are one hinted at with one of the characters wearing peace button on his lapel and 'Born to Kill' on his helmer TIr is asked by a colonel the meaning of his peace harge. /You know It's the Jungian thing, he replics, the duadits of life, love and death. The colonel does not buy this, Bur Kubrick clearly does.
His soldiers, schooled to kill, are swept towards their bloody end, with only strongest surviving- Those who hesitare are Jost. Te is a bleak and pessimistic view not only of war. but of humanity in generai, with its strong implication that we are unable to SPECIAL OFFER £3.00 OFF!
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resist the prossures which push towards the
It would be nice to think that films like
Kubrick y marked an anti-war the glorification of the Rambo-type bar-
In lact Platoon Hamburger burian watrior.
Hill and Full Metal Jackel mark an impasse.
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