Follow us on social

google cta
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
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:



YouTube/ Quincy Institute

google cta
Analysis | Video Section
F-35
Top image credit: Brian G. Rhodes via shutterstock.com

The military is babying F-35s to hide their true cost to taxpayers

Military Industrial Complex

Are the military services babying the F-35 to obscure its true costs while continuing to get enormous sums of taxpayer funding for a plane that has consistently failed to live up to performance expectations?

From the very beginning, the F-35 program has been plagued by hundreds of billions of dollars in cost overruns and repeated schedule delays.

keep readingShow less
Owen West Clearview AI
Top Image Credit: Left image: Defense Officials Testify on SOCOM and Cybercom 02.14.19 (YouTube/Screenshot)/ Right image: Ascannio (Shutterstock)

Controversial AI facial recognition biz gets a Pentagon champion

Military Industrial Complex

Owen West, the incoming head of the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), previously advised Clearview AI, an invasive facial recognition technology company that has heavily involved itself in the Ukraine war to try to shed its pariah status in the commercial sector.

Created in 2015 to boost collaboration between the Pentagon and Silicon Valley, the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) was given more than $1.3 billion in taxpayer funds to in 2025 to bring commercial technologies into the defense space through contract acquisition and award programs, public-private partnerships, and other opportunities.

keep readingShow less
Zbigniew Brzezinski Camp David Summit
Top photo credit: Menachem Begin, then Prime Minister of Israel, plays chess with President Carter's National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski (right) during Camp David Summit, September 1978. (Public domain/National Archives)

Zbigniew Brzezinski: Foreign policy prophet or blind man?

Media

In an interview with the French weekly Le Nouvel Observateur, a former White House national security advisor, renowned for his hatred of Soviet Communism, was asked whether he regretted his idea to aid the Afghan mujahideen with a secret money and weapons pipeline that started flowing months before the USSR invaded in late December 1979.

The interview took place in 1998, five years after Islamists who had been trained in Afghanistan detonated a bomb in the parking garage under the World Trade Center, killing six people and injuring more than a thousand.

keep readingShow less
google cta
Want more of our stories on Google?
Click here to make us a Preferred Source.

LATEST

QIOSK

Newsletter

Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.