Hearts and Minds

I don't know if self-centered would be the appropriate way to describe the American mentality back during the Vietnam War...but that's how it came off to me. My understanding from the movie was that the U.S did not want the Vietnamese to become a Communist country and so they had to step in and prevent that. The way I can picture that is, a neighbor not liking how the other neighbor is raising their children so they have to come over, uninvited, and teach them the 'right way' to do it. I understand that there is more to the story and that communism is wrong but its also not right for someone else to step in. As the U.S, we would never allow for someone else to come in to our country and try to teach us how to run a show.
From my knowledge of the 'Asian' way of life, I get that they are real kept together culture that aim to live in harmony and peace. They are a high-context culture that prevents confrontation and wants to keep to themselves.
From the movie, I saw that a lot of the Vietnamese people that lived out in the countryside were victimized by having their homes burned down or bombs dropped on their lands. Children and innocent people died because American airplanes would fly dropping some kind of pesticide on their crops. It all seems so horrible and they just saw the Americans as horrible people who came into their country to take and destroy.
A lot of the soldiers also didn't understand the reasons why they were there. Many of these veterans would come back to the States and tell everyone that they shouldn't be in Vietnam to begin with. Took them a trip to 'Nam to realize that their government had lied to them.
I didn't appreciate the way that Cocker described the Vietnam war to the school children. He made them sound like backwards, ignorant people that were committing a crime by becoming Communist. The way I think is that we should learn to accept the way other people think and choose to run their lives. They may also think that the American way of life is wrong. No one is to say that they are right.
Hearts and Minds just opened up my eyes to what we were doing and what the Vietnamese were going through. It wasn't our most proud moment in history but it feels like we may be repeating history at the moment with the events that are occurring in the Middle East. I don't know, maybe the way I see it is wrong but then again, who is right?