AmateurMovieReviews.com

The war in Iraq has renewed a great deal of interest in the American legacy in Vietnam, as evidenced by President Bush's recent trip to Vietnam under the guise of trade relations. Make no mistake, the trip to Vietnam was a symbolic one meant to stir up emotions on the part of the public. If the public is confused as to what message this trip was to represent, that is no crime as much of what the government does these days regarding the Iraq War is confusing and undecipherable.

Let it be known, the war in Iraq is not the Vietnam War. There are innumerable differences between two conflicts, although the symbolism makes sense. To a degree, the Iraq War is closer to the Soviet/Afghanistan War on the 1980's, although making a moral comparison between the Soviets and US/British troops is next to impossible as the Soviets waged a conventional and chemical campaign of genocide solely to extend its borders and protect a Marxist dictatorship. The Soviets lost, showing the difficulty of waging a successful campaign in that part of the world.

So, the question is, why has the US/NATO invasion of Afghanistan been relatively successful? Why do the Afghani people not kill themselves in the same manner as the Iraqis? Perhaps, the answer to that lies in the phrase "Hearts and Minds." The Afghanis embraced the liberation from their Taliban overlords. In Iraq, "Hearts and Minds" has not won out.

The term "Hearts and Minds" derives from the legendary phrase of former President Lyndon Johnson when he committed troops to the battlefield of Vietnam to start America's most brutal and ill-conceived war. In Johnson's words, the war would not be won in battle, but in the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people who wanted freedom from communism. While the Vietnamese wanted freedom, they wanted freedom from foreign invaders. They perpetually fought wars with China, Japan and France before the American troops landed; troops whom they considered foreign imperialist invaders looking to keep North and South Vietnam separate so as to maintain a free market economy in the south. No, the communist regime was far from benign, their brutality was among the most vicious atrocities waged against the population. The United States, however, misunderstood the "hearts and minds" of the Vietnamese people and were never able to get the support they required in order to achieve victory. The United States faced three options: use the atomic bomb on Hanoi; admit defeat; or use the guise of Vietnamization, training and supporting the South Vietnamese army to fight a proxy war while the US could withdraw with honor. Vietnamizing the war was simply an elaborate way of admitting defeat and it fooled no one.

In 1974, the Vietnam War was, for all intents and purposes, over. A documentary emerged that year that would go on to win the Best Documentary category at the Academy Awards. So controversial was the film, Frank Sinatra actually apologized to the nation TV audience for the fact that the film one. That documentary film was titled, appropriately enough, HEARTS AND MINDS and it was the most scathing indictment on the effects of the war on the civilian population that the world have ever seen.

HEARTS AND MINDS focuses on the public's misunderstanding of the war and how it was sold to the American people as a war no different from World War II, where there were no shades of gray when it came to defining the aggressor and the victimized. In Vietnam, the people who received the main brunt of the war and its devastating effects were the Vietnamese civilians. What makes the film so chilling is when American leaders and soldiers are interviewed and routinely dismiss and degrade the civilians. "Vietnam would be a beautiful country if it wasn't for the people. They are backwards and primitive and they get in the way." "In Asia, people don't respect life like we do in the west." These sentiments are cross cut between the ravages of bombing missions on mainly civilian targets that left people homeless and their relatives killed.

To a degree, HEARTS AND MINDS is not entirely honest in the way in which it only presents a picture of the American soldier as a villain while not presenting any of the good the soldiers had done. (Please do not be so naive to assume that there were no heroic and compassionate American soldiers) Nor does it present the brutality of the communists. The film does, however, paint a realistic picture of the horrors that war wages and, sadly, that is a lesson the world never seems to wish to learn.