Flags of our fathers

After several abortive attempts to get through it, I finished watching Flags of Our Fathers. The movie ends with a quote that bluntly states the movie's point:

I finally came to the conclusion that he maybe he was right maybe there are no such things as heroes maybe there are just people like my dad, I finally came to understand why they were so uncomfortable being called heroes. Heroes are something we create, something we need. It's a way for us to understand what is almost incomprehensible, how people could sacrifice so much for us, but for my dad and these men the risks they took, the wounds they suffered, they did that for their buddies, they may have fought for there country but they died for there friends. For the man in front for the man beside him, and if we wish to truly honor these men we should remember them the way they really were the way my dad remembered them.

Amen to that. There's nothing wrong, and everything right, about remembering American's veterans this way. Even if the Iwo Jima campaign turns out, in hindsight, not to have been as critical as we thought, that judgment doesn't diminish one iota the risks and sacrifices these men made.

For the Marine at Iwo Jima or Fallujah, what matters is how they fought. It's up to us, as citizens of a democracy, to make sure that there aren't lingering doubts about why.

I liked this movie a lot. If you haven't seen it, I recommend you do so. It's just as much about the civilians at home as the soldiers on the battlefield--which means it's worth watching now for the questions it poses to all of us.

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