With inferiority comes pride, and with pride comes crime

Inferiority does not only mean looking down on someone. It also means bringing up the question of why they are to be looked down upon. Hearts and Minds, the documentary directed by Peter Davis, shows exactly how and why Americans thought they had the right to look down upon Vietnam, and how we could not be more wrong in that mind set. It also shows how this way of thinking led to the denial of a criminal war.

General William Westmoreland states in the documentary, “Life is plentiful and life is cheap in the orient, and the philosophy of the orient expresses it…life is not important.” If an American citizen were to have seen this scene by itself, there would be a chance of it being plausible in their opinion. But when it was preceded by a shot of a devastating Vietnamese funeral where the cries outdo any other sound, and children too young to understand what death is, are draining themselves of water, it no longer holds its ground. When it is followed by American bombs falling everywhere, by, what it seems, the million, General William Westmoreland looks like an idiot.

It cannot go unnoticed that the quote is shown to be quite the opposite in the documentary. A scene is shown where an American mother and father are praising the government’s work in Vietnam, only to point out the death of their son in the Vietnam War. Wait, what? That’s right. A woman in Vietnam is crawling in after her dead relative in the grave that they have just tossed him in, while parents in America still believe that the death of their son will amount to something in a useless war. They smile. I am not saying that American’s do not care about the deaths of their family members. What I am saying is that the Vietnamese do too. They are not inferior, but we looked at them as being inferior. They begin to see themselves as being inferior, as one Vietnamese villager pointed out in the documentary, that the lives of his countrymen are like flies. One swat, and they are dead. So who is it that sees life as “cheap,” and “not important.” Vietnamese, or Americans?

Lt. George Coker, in the documentary, finds death thrilling. Thrilling? Let’s break down that word. According to Word Net Web, thrilling means causing a surge of emotion or excitement. According to this same website, excitement gives the feeling of lively and cheerful joy. Lt George Coker, an American, finds death joyful? Even if General Westmoreland was right in saying that the Vietnamese found life to be cheap, shouldn’t the Vietnamese find us inferior, in that we find death to be joyful? I think so.

So we thought that the Vietnamese are inferior, that they cannot take care of themselves, and we need to swoop in for the rescue. We are denying that we are doing worse over there. Now with this denial comes more pride. Now with this denial comes more war, and not leaving. Now with this denial comes the government’s privilege to get away with most everything criminal in war.