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

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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:

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The attack occurred on February 28 in Minab, Iran, and killed at least 165 people — mostly school-aged children. Although the U.S. stresses it would not deliberately attack a school, subsequent investigation by American military investigators points the finger at Washington, as do remnants of a U.S.-made Tomahawk missile recovered from the site. (Only the U.S., the UK, and Australia have Tomahawk missiles.) CBS news reported that the strike on the school might have been an accident, perhaps sprung from outdated intelligence wrongly identifying it as still part of a nearby Iranian base.

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