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

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Analysis | Video Section

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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Heads of state of Mali, Assimi Goita, Niger, General Abdourahamane Tiani and Burkina Faso, Captain Ibrahim Traore, pose for photographs during the first ordinary summit of heads of state and governments of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) in Niamey, Niger July 6, 2024. REUTERS/Mahamadou Hamidou//File Photo

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In Mali, General Assimi Goïta, who took power in a 2020 coup, now plans to remain in power through at least the end of this decade, as do his counterparts in neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger. As long-ruling juntas consolidate power in national capitals, much of the Sahelian terrain remains out of government control.

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