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Oliver Stone: on being 19 in war, and for a county addicted to it

Oliver Stone: on being 19 in war, and for a county addicted to it

The fabled director opens up on Vietnam, as well as the challenges of a free media and speech, today. (VIDEO)

Analysis | Video Section
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In his memoir "Chasing the Light," director Oliver Stone talks about America's angst over Vietnam:

"We were so proud, and then, when we couldn't achieve victory, we had to lie like we all do when we deny what we know is true — that we lost, and lost big-time, and all those technology-loving Pentagon warriors were at last revealed as failures, and those determined little Vietnamese had licked us."

Then why did we not try to avoid the same fate time and again?

In early December, the Quincy Institute, in concert with the Center for War and Society (San Diego State University), hosted Stone at the iconic USS Midway Museum to commemorate, in part, the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War. Gregory Daddis, director of the Center for War and Society and professor of military studies, got a chance to ask Stone not only about his own service as an Army infantryman (which later inspired his 1987 film "Platoon"), but about his own frustrations with the cyclical nature of American war-making, right up to Russia-gate, and today's current conflicts.

Watch below:



YouTube/ Quincy Institute

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Analysis | Video Section
Trump and Lindsey Graham
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Does MAGA want Trump to ‘make regime change great again’?

Washington Politics

“We must abandon the failed policy of nation building and regime change that Hillary Clinton pushed in Iraq, Libya, Egypt and Syria,” then-candidate Donald Trump said in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in 2016.

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Toxic exposures US military bases
Military Base Toxic Exposure Map (Courtesy of Hill & Ponton)

Mapping toxic exposure on US military bases. Hint: There's a lot.

Military Industrial Complex

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Trump’s quest to kick America's ‘Iraq War syndrome’

Latin America

American forces invaded Panama in 1989 to capture Manuel Noriega, a former U.S. ally whose rule over Panama was marred by drug trafficking, corruption and human rights abuses.

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