Hearts and Minds

I found Hearts and Minds to be very disturbing by how it showed the on the great scale of how we hurt the Vietnamese people. The documentary helped to show the ignorance of our politicians and military leaders and discussed the blatant lies all the Presidents during the time expressed to the country. I had known for awhile that the Vietnamese did not want Americans in their country but seeing people express their desire to be an independent country helped reinforce that idea and show me the true strong feelings that the people of the country had. For instance the father that was hiding from the South Vietnamese government because of his views expressed how the whole country was so happy when the French left but as soon that happened the American invaders came in and started to take control. The war he saw was not one of a split country but instead a war trying to get rid of another foreign aggression.

Most disturbing of all though was when the fighter pilots were talking about how they were just doing a job and how they did it really well. Their faces lacked emotion and had no expression of remorse what so ever, then you are shown people who have lost their entire homes because of bombings. These people show how they have nothing left except a few bricks left of what was their home and then you have this contrast of Navy Lt. with no remorse talking about how he accomplished his job well when he could of blown up nothing of military importance and could of been the pilot who blew up this woman's home. Also the scene of the father talking about how he lost his daughter because of bombs and how she is never coming back helps to reinforce a feeling that I have individually that we accomplished nothing but disturb the Vietnamese people and help bring ruin to much of the country.

Not only did the film show how we just disrupted the lives of so many people it helped to show the military confusion and immoral activities are soldiers took part in. You have the scene where the former Secretary of Defense tells how he asked the generals how many more men it would take, if the extra 200,000 would be enough and they had no answer at all for him. Also you seen these scenes of soldiers paying for sexual favors to prostitutes and helping to support a war time economy by bargaining with the local vendors on the streets. This element of know one knowing what the hell to do to the win the war, the lies told, and how our soldiers had no clue if they were helping. In the middle of one of the battles a soldier is asked do you think you are helping and he answers with i mean i think we are helping, i really do not know; this really emphasizes how are soldiers felt like there being there had no point or purpose.

In general i came out of the movie feeling so sorry for the acts that were committed against the people of Vietnam and I have a lot more anger towards our government for the acts they did and the waste of life that occurred. There was no need to bomb so much, it did nothing to stop the NVA, also the spraying of the forests did not stop the enemy either but instead killed so many adults and children and had the negative effect of the people hating America even more. The movie helped to bring light to people how our purpose over there was a lie and that all we did was bring destruction not peace like was said. This was definitely one of the darkest moments in U.S. history and something that needs to be told to people so it will hopefully not happen again.