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

Follow us on social

google cta

Analysis | Video Section

google cta

google cta

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:

From Your Site Articles

Related Articles Around the Web

How You Can Read About Director Oliver Stone's Combat ... ›

Dear RS readers: It has been an extraordinary year and our editing team has been working overtime to make sure that we are covering the current conflicts with quality, fresh analysis that doesn’t cleave to the mainstream orthodoxy or take official Washington and the commentariat at face value. Our staff reporters, experts, and outside writers offer top-notch, independent work, daily. Please consider making a tax-exempt, year-end contribution to Responsible Statecraftso that we can continue this quality coverage — which you will find nowhere else — into 2026. Happy Holidays!

Analysis | Video Section

World War II Normandy

Top photo credit: American soldiers march a group of German prisoners along a beachhead in Northern France after which they will be sent to England. June 6, 1944. (U.S. Army Signal Corps Photographic Files/public domain)

Marines know we don't kill unarmed survivors for a reason

Military Industrial Complex

As the Trump Administration continues to kill so-called Venezuelan "narco terrorists" through "non-international armed conflict" (whatever that means), it is clear it is doing so without Congressional authorization and in defiance of international law.

Perhaps worse, through these actions, the administration is demonstrating wanton disregard for centuries of Western battlefield precedent, customs, and traditions that righteously seek to preserve as many lives during war as possible.

keep readingShow less

Amanda Sloat

Top photo credit: Amanda Sloat, with Department of State, in 2015. (VOA photo/Wikimedia Commons)

Pranked Biden official exposes lie that Ukraine war was inevitable

When it comes to the Ukraine war, there have long been two realities. One is propagated by former Biden administration officials in speeches and media interviews, in which Russian President Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion had nothing to do with NATO’s U.S.-led expansion into the now shattered country, there was nothing that could have been done to prevent what was an inevitable imperialist land-grab, and that negotiations once the war started to try to end the killing were not only impossible, but morally wrong.

Then there is the other, polar opposite reality that occasionally slips through when officials think few people are listening, and which was recently summed up by former Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Europe at the National Security Council Amanda Sloat, in an interview with Russian pranksters whom she believed were aides to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

keep readingShow less

google cta

Want more of our stories on Google?
Click here to make us a Preferred Source.

LATEST

QIOSK