by Pa Rock
Film Fan
One of the saddest aspects of the Trump administration is that by being so vengeful and corrupt, it tends to make people forget just how awful the administration of George "Dubya" Bush (and Dick Cheney) was. And that is just sad because when it came to being despicable leaders, Bush and Cheney were definitely out there breaking new ground.
After Bush and Cheney were elected (kinda, sorta) in 2000, but before they were sworn into office, Dick Cheney was in contact with US intelligence agencies seeking out reports and materials that they had concerning Iraq. The Iraqis had embarrassed Bush's father in the brief war that he threw against them, and the country was in a strategic location with regard to Middle East oil routes - and Cheney, still on the Halliburton payroll, was focused on enhancing the US position in international oil markets.
Bush and Cheney entered their offices in January of 2001 with a hidden agenda to stir things up in the Middle East, and particularly in Iraq. Eight months later, after a group of Saudis pulled off the 9/11 attacks against the US, the Bush regime promptly began readying itself for the war it had long been seeking - a war with Iraq, which quickly expanded into a wider war with Afghanistan. The Saudis, whose citizens attacked the United States, sat back smiling and prepared to play an even stronger role in the world's oil economy.
In hindsight many Americans would probably accept the fact that George Bush was neither a great intellect nor an average military tactician. The war was primarily organized and carried out at the desk of Dick Cheney. Cheney realized that if America was to prevail in this combat endeavor, it had to avoid letting the war in the Middle East become as unpopular with the public as the Vietnam war had been. He was all about creating and maintaining a good public relations front in the war.
And Bush, little more than a yammering idiot, made it known that the Middle East war was not anything like Vietnam - and Americans should compare it to World War II.
One thing that Cheney did was to keep the focus off of the American war dead. Journalists were forbidden to go near the planes that returned to Dover Air Force Base carrying the flag-draped caskets of the young Americans who had been killed in the Middle East - and pictures of the caskets were completely forbidden. Things kept hidden were less immediate and real to the American public.
Another area of concern that had plagued the US war effort in Vietnam was the draft, and though America desperately needed more young bodies to fight for it's Middle Eastern oil supply and shipment routes, Cheney was adamant that there be no draft. To create a pool of skilled bodies to ship to the war, the administration came up with a policy that it called "Stop-Loss," a clever stratagem which essentially recycled combat veterans back into combat - often against their will. A young person might come home after a bloody tour expecting to be released from the military service, as per the agreement that he or she had signed going into the meat grinder, but suddenly they were handed a notice that their term of enlistment had been extended and they were headed back to the war.
There was no draft, but youngsters who were coming home with intense emotional scars, and sometimes physical wounds as well, were being patched up and sent back into combat. It was literally horror upon horror.
(From 2005 through 2012 I was a mental health counselor at four different military installations, three stateside and one overseas, and I can personally attest to the severity of the emotional and mental damage that our troops and their families were suffering.)
Last night I watched a war movie from that period of our history. "Stop-Loss" was filmed in 2008 and had as its primary focus the aforesaid policy that the Bush administration had implemented as a "back-door" draft. The movie focused on three young men who had just returned to their hometown in rural Texas following a tour in Iraq. The three marched into town in a big parade, got drunk at a community party at a local bar, got into a classic bar fight, and then spent the next few days generally unwinding and beginning to fall apart before reporting back to their unit the following week.
The three soldiers were played by Ryan Philippe, Channing Tatum, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Philippe's character wanted out of the service, Tatum's wanted to stay in but sought a special reward for doing so, and Gordon-Levitt's wanted to stay under any conditions. But he Army had its own plans. Instead of carefully evaluating these men and making some careful decisions about what was in their best interest, the military expeditiously made decisions that were in its best interest.
Tatum got what he wanted - as assignment to sniper school - and was happy to stay in, though that action ended the long-term relationship that he had with his girl. Joseph Gordon-Levitt fell into a liquor bottle and couldn't get out. His new marriage fell apart, and the military, the one for which h had fought valiantly for over a year, gave him a Bad Conduct Discharge. And Philippe was the saddest case of all. He just wanted out - and his commanding officer, Timothy Olyphant, instead informed the young sergeant that the President of the United States had seen fit to extend his service involuntarily and that he would soon be returning to Iraq. He had been "stop-lossed."
And that was all just in the first twenty minutes or so of the movie. From there on the action centered on their lives as they quickly unraveled and fell apart. Their situations were riveting - and they were very, very real. They were the guys who had sat in my office crying about alcohol drug dependence, nightmares, flashbacks, cheating wives and broken marriages, and buddies closer than brothers who had died, or been injured, or mentally unwound while trying to win a war that none of them understood or knew how to justify.
"Stop-Loss" is a very intense movie that gives a tragically real representation of the young people who were caught up in the repeated deployments into that awful war. It definitely is not for the faint-of-heart. By the time the credits rolled, I was beginning to experience my own PTSD symptoms.
Film Fan
One of the saddest aspects of the Trump administration is that by being so vengeful and corrupt, it tends to make people forget just how awful the administration of George "Dubya" Bush (and Dick Cheney) was. And that is just sad because when it came to being despicable leaders, Bush and Cheney were definitely out there breaking new ground.
After Bush and Cheney were elected (kinda, sorta) in 2000, but before they were sworn into office, Dick Cheney was in contact with US intelligence agencies seeking out reports and materials that they had concerning Iraq. The Iraqis had embarrassed Bush's father in the brief war that he threw against them, and the country was in a strategic location with regard to Middle East oil routes - and Cheney, still on the Halliburton payroll, was focused on enhancing the US position in international oil markets.
Bush and Cheney entered their offices in January of 2001 with a hidden agenda to stir things up in the Middle East, and particularly in Iraq. Eight months later, after a group of Saudis pulled off the 9/11 attacks against the US, the Bush regime promptly began readying itself for the war it had long been seeking - a war with Iraq, which quickly expanded into a wider war with Afghanistan. The Saudis, whose citizens attacked the United States, sat back smiling and prepared to play an even stronger role in the world's oil economy.
In hindsight many Americans would probably accept the fact that George Bush was neither a great intellect nor an average military tactician. The war was primarily organized and carried out at the desk of Dick Cheney. Cheney realized that if America was to prevail in this combat endeavor, it had to avoid letting the war in the Middle East become as unpopular with the public as the Vietnam war had been. He was all about creating and maintaining a good public relations front in the war.
And Bush, little more than a yammering idiot, made it known that the Middle East war was not anything like Vietnam - and Americans should compare it to World War II.
One thing that Cheney did was to keep the focus off of the American war dead. Journalists were forbidden to go near the planes that returned to Dover Air Force Base carrying the flag-draped caskets of the young Americans who had been killed in the Middle East - and pictures of the caskets were completely forbidden. Things kept hidden were less immediate and real to the American public.
Another area of concern that had plagued the US war effort in Vietnam was the draft, and though America desperately needed more young bodies to fight for it's Middle Eastern oil supply and shipment routes, Cheney was adamant that there be no draft. To create a pool of skilled bodies to ship to the war, the administration came up with a policy that it called "Stop-Loss," a clever stratagem which essentially recycled combat veterans back into combat - often against their will. A young person might come home after a bloody tour expecting to be released from the military service, as per the agreement that he or she had signed going into the meat grinder, but suddenly they were handed a notice that their term of enlistment had been extended and they were headed back to the war.
There was no draft, but youngsters who were coming home with intense emotional scars, and sometimes physical wounds as well, were being patched up and sent back into combat. It was literally horror upon horror.
(From 2005 through 2012 I was a mental health counselor at four different military installations, three stateside and one overseas, and I can personally attest to the severity of the emotional and mental damage that our troops and their families were suffering.)
Last night I watched a war movie from that period of our history. "Stop-Loss" was filmed in 2008 and had as its primary focus the aforesaid policy that the Bush administration had implemented as a "back-door" draft. The movie focused on three young men who had just returned to their hometown in rural Texas following a tour in Iraq. The three marched into town in a big parade, got drunk at a community party at a local bar, got into a classic bar fight, and then spent the next few days generally unwinding and beginning to fall apart before reporting back to their unit the following week.
The three soldiers were played by Ryan Philippe, Channing Tatum, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Philippe's character wanted out of the service, Tatum's wanted to stay in but sought a special reward for doing so, and Gordon-Levitt's wanted to stay under any conditions. But he Army had its own plans. Instead of carefully evaluating these men and making some careful decisions about what was in their best interest, the military expeditiously made decisions that were in its best interest.
Tatum got what he wanted - as assignment to sniper school - and was happy to stay in, though that action ended the long-term relationship that he had with his girl. Joseph Gordon-Levitt fell into a liquor bottle and couldn't get out. His new marriage fell apart, and the military, the one for which h had fought valiantly for over a year, gave him a Bad Conduct Discharge. And Philippe was the saddest case of all. He just wanted out - and his commanding officer, Timothy Olyphant, instead informed the young sergeant that the President of the United States had seen fit to extend his service involuntarily and that he would soon be returning to Iraq. He had been "stop-lossed."
And that was all just in the first twenty minutes or so of the movie. From there on the action centered on their lives as they quickly unraveled and fell apart. Their situations were riveting - and they were very, very real. They were the guys who had sat in my office crying about alcohol drug dependence, nightmares, flashbacks, cheating wives and broken marriages, and buddies closer than brothers who had died, or been injured, or mentally unwound while trying to win a war that none of them understood or knew how to justify.
"Stop-Loss" is a very intense movie that gives a tragically real representation of the young people who were caught up in the repeated deployments into that awful war. It definitely is not for the faint-of-heart. By the time the credits rolled, I was beginning to experience my own PTSD symptoms.
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