Hearts and Minds: Michael Moore wishes he were this good

The government said that they needed to win the Hearts and Minds of the people of Vietnam if they were ever going to win, but, after watching the documentary, it seems to me that they needed to win over the hearts and minds of the people back home first and foremost. They did their best to do just that, and we see this through Lt. Coker.
Coker had been through hell, clearly, after spending many years as a prisoner of war. When he came back to the US, he was declared a hero. Throughout the movie we see him speaking to different groups of people about the war, and each one is different. First, there was the initial "fresh off the plane" type speech. This speech he gave didn't sound like something a prisoner of war would say; instead it sounded like propaganda (if you've seen Inglourious Basterds, he reminded me of Frederick Zoller). He said he'd "go back again" if he had to, which I don't believe for a minute. The other speeches he gave were to schoolchildren and a group of women. To the schoolchildren he preaches the importance of fighting for your country, saying that they will most likely fight in a war someday. To the women, he talks about how important it is to raise kids to be the best soldiers they can; it all starts at home with their first commanding officer: Mom. These speeches, if seen by themselves without seeing the others, aren't all that bad. Coker speaks very well, and with his navy uniform on and his Joe Anybody look, he's a great tool for the military to use to connect with the people of America. When you see all three of them, however, you realize that he is just spewing out propaganda. He says that he got through because of faith in his family, God and country, but I find that hard to believe after seeing the interviews with amputees and other soldiers (especially the one in the middle of the firefight who admits to not being able to tell what they're fighting for). This, of course, means that Davis did a fantastic job in convincing me that the government wanted us to believe that we were doing the right thing but in reality it sucked.
Davis used pathos to such a fantastic effect. There were moments where I felt so bad for the people of Vietnam, like the poor man who lost his daughter, son, mother and wife, that I started to despise how manipulative and cold the government was. That of course got me to thinking about what is going on right now; the parallels to the "conflict" in Iraq were bountiful. I could go on about that, but I'd rather stick to this film. Anyways, the most important and best part of the entire documentary was the scene near the end where we see a soldier from the Vietnamese army getting buried with his family crying and screaming. After Davis makes us listen to a little boy cry and clutch onto a photograph of his dead father (children crying = effective pathos, unless you're Satan), he cuts to an interview with General Westmoreland. Representing the entire military and government of the U.S., he blatantly says "The Oriental doesn't put the same high price on life as does a Westerner. Life is plentiful. Life is cheap in the Orient." This thinking is seen throughout the film. When his ludicrous statement is over, Davis cuts back to the dead man being buried. The man's wife, in a fit of sorrow, needs to be pulled out of the grave so that the soldiers can bury him. That life doesn't seem cheap to me, and Davis knows that every other person who has seen this will think the exact same thing. He leads us to question the government and our intentions in the most effective way possible.
I feel quite unpatriotic after watching, but I don't really feel all that guilty. We've all now seen it, so I don't need to describe how the government knew that we weren't making progress but continued to send in troops or ordered the bombing innocent civilians. Davis masterfully showed the sorrow felt by the Vietnamese people, people left with just bricks where they used to live, people who spend all day making coffins for children that die by the hundreds every day, people who feel agony and sadness just like every other person. He showed us that the U.S. had become what we had fought just decades before: a terrorizing military force that showed little restraint and beat and killed the innocent.