Saigon to Bagdad
Flowing slowly down and down, circling out to the end until it reaches the very bottom of the downward spiral. The Usual Suspect wrote a powerful post titled The Downward Spiral. The path from becoming a boy to a man, maybe a man to a warrior, or perhaps simply up to down, whatever it is, it is not fun. It is a tough post to read because it deals with the death of an ideal, the point where cold hard reality meets up with personal idealism. He says quote, “Barely 21 and dumber then shit…thought we would be cool with the people, and bring the hammer down on the baddies.” It was not long until his idealism was rocked to its core. He was in his Stryker when it was hit by an IED killing two Americans: Iraqis cheered.
Born on the Fourth of July is a story that deals with the struggles of the Vietnam War era, the idealism of many of the soldiers, especially the soldiers who entered the war in its infancy and the sad reality that awaited many of them wherever they went. When the Usual Suspect talks about being “green” he means more then I could possible sum up in a 500 word blog post, but the short end of it is someone who lacks the full soldier experience: I think. For the Usual Suspect the grind of day in and day out is what gets at him.
Ron Kovic, Tom Cruise, from Born on the Fourth of July, while he was not an actual person, he represents a generation of soldiers, who went to fight a war for their country that their country did not believe in, so the country took it out on its soldiers. They went through all kinds of discrimination wherever they went. The Usual Suspect is now fight a war that he thought would be something else. The Vietnam veteran’s stories, like the Usual Suspects could be summed up in the same way, “We were green once.”
Filed by whitepe at March 26th, 2008 under Uncategorized
