The first paragraph of David Ansen's review of the new Gulf War movie Jarhead, which is based on the book of the same title, tells us a lot about the American soldier's mentality:
Early in Tony Swofford’s caustic memoir “Jarhead,” we learn that all those antiwar Vietnam movies we civilians watched with horror—"Apocalypse Now,” “Platoon,” “Full Metal Jacket”—were, in the eyes of the young soldiers at Camp Pendleton and Travis Air Force Base and Fort Bragg, a turn-on, pure war porn. “All Vietnam films were pro-war, no matter what the supposed message, what Kubrick or Coppola or Stone intended … [They] watch the same films and are excited by them, because the magic brutality of the films celebrates the terrible and despicable beauty of their fighting skills,” Swofford writes. “Fight, rape, war, pillage, burn. Filmic images of death and carnage are pornography for the military man.”
This makes sense of course. After all, just what sort of person signs up for a job that entails nothing more or less than killing others and having others try to kill you?
