Hearts and Minds

Honestly, the last thing I wanted to do after being sick for a whole weekend was watch a documentary over the Vietnam War. I was exhausted, and I was functioning adequately only thanks to a LOT of medicine. So I wasn't too thrilled about watching Hearts and Minds at this precise moment. Thankfully, I did.

Yes, I expected the scenes to be brutal. After reading everyone's blog posts, I expected the documentary to be...well....epic. And it was. The images of violence being done to civilians were the worst to watch. The bombings, the dead bodies, the shots fired with no cause, all of these are easier to describe with words than with images. You don't wince when someone explains to you how a guy got shot in the head. You don't visibly flinch when someone explains to you how a plane threw down dozens of bombs upon an innocent village. You don't squirm when someone explains to you how some of the soldiers didn't even mind killing, because they enjoyed it. You do these involuntary movement only when you are able to see the images for yourself, with your own eyes.

It was painful. But it was worth it. My perspective on this war has, for about the billionth time in the last month, just completely changed. This documentary managed to do what no movie has done for me: managed to get me to truly feel the emotions of the "opposing" side of the war. To us, they might seem like inferiors. We can fill the minds of our children with hatred and absolutely incorrect images of the Vietnamese, but eventually the truth comes out. Just like it did in this documentary. We need to always place ourselves in the shoes of other before we act hastily, and are too quick to judge. Its only after we've seen someone else's perspective that we truly begin to understand something so complicated as a war.