Casualties of War

Brian de Palma's 1989 film, based on an actual incident in which American soldiers raped and murdered a Vietnamese girl, could have been directed this year. It relates so well to the atrocity at Haditha and other horrific actions by American troops in Iraq, the only conclusion to be drawn is that some members of an occupying force will, by their very nature, eventually regress into a collective of monsters capable of any malicious act of cruelty.

Though it's always individuals who commit heinous acts such as those depicted in Casualties of War, it is not a case of unique, singular psychopaths managing to enter the Armed Forces undetected. As De Palma shrewdly depicts in the film, these war crimes are an expected and tolerated side-effect of long-term military actions, particularly those undertaken against a canny, guerilla army like the Viet Cong or the Iraqi Insurgents. Higher-ranking officials and civilian leadership have a set policy of looking the other way when it comes to these kinds of human rights violations.

James Wolcott discusses here some of the factors that play into this unfortunate scenario. In the simplest possible terms, a powerful occupying army will eventually be viewed as monstrous by the local population, and so their resulting behavior will increasingly play into this image. They will become the blood-thirsty butchers that they were always expected to be.

Rhetorically, it puts those of us on the homefront in a difficult position. It gives me no pleasure to come down on American soldiers, young men and women who, for the most part, did not enlist in our Armed Forces out of some great desire to murder foreigners or occupy sovereign nations. Yet there is no real excuse for murdering children en masse whilst one is representing America overseas. The only solution, I feel, is to punish all of those involved in such incidents. The soldiers who have actually done the raping and/or killing as well as the military leadership that permitted, encouraged and promoted such activities.



In De Palma's film, the disgraceful crimes undertaken by a small cadre of Vietnam soldiers occur for two reasons. The enemy has been sufficiently dehumanized for these troops that raping a Vietnamese woman doesn't strike them as cruel or inhuman. Additionally, a lack of accountability or moral leadership has led to a pack mentality, in which everyone defers at all times to the most aggressive member among them.

Sgt. Tony Meserve (Sean Penn), in other words, knows that he can act however he pleases in the field with complete impunity. He's much more valuable to his commanding officers than any number of Vietnamese whom he might abuse, so his cocky attitude and naked hostility are accepted as the cost of doing business. And because of his confidence, his attitude, and the fact that he's surrounded by yes men, no one wants to violate his orders or fall from his good graces.

Yet that's exactly what PFC Erickson (Michael J. Fox) must do when Meserve goes into a Vietnamese village and kidnaps a young girl (Thuy Thu Le). It's unfair, in a way, that Erickson's put in this position. Rarely does doing the right thing carry with it the immediate risk of being murdered by your comrades-in-arms. To me, this is the real message of De Palma's film - in a way, bad things happen so often because it's exceptionally difficult to do the right thing. That's why war is such an unfortunate state of affairs. It's horrible enough when carried out properly, but by its very nature, the conduct eventually degenerates into the worst mankind has to offer.

I'm writing this on a day when there has actually been a positive move forrward in the Iraq struggle. One of the early leaders of the insurgency, the rotten bastard Al-Zarqawi, was killed in a bombing raid. It's something of a hollow victory on many levels - al-Qaida isn't so much a top-down hierarchy kind of organization, where killing one leader will really matter, and Zarqawi was hardly an original member, having only joined the cause after the 9/11 attacks. But still...credit where it's due. (Although I should add that it's not very classy of us to trot the dead guy's picture around as if he was a prize-winning flounder or something.) I just hope this isn't a motivational kind of win, the sort of shallow uptick that will cause the country to re-enthuse about our chances of "winning."

In life, as in Casualties of War, the conflict, on an individual level, isn't so much about wins or losses as it is survival for its own sake. In a guerilla war, one side always tries to seduce the other into battles, generally with little luck. The soldiers wander about in the Vietnamese jungle only to be set upon by well-hidden snipers. They enter villages and are ambused. (One such incident early on, in which a beloved fellow soldier is gunned down and killed in a village, sparks the animosity of Meserve in the film). There aren't battles that can end triumphantly, but only a grinding, endless war of attrition.

So it's hard to get too excited about the news that we've taken down another "al-Qaida leader." It seems like we do that every week and the news itself never gets any better.

Anyway, as for De Palma's film, I can't recommend it highly enough. It's troubling to watch, not outrageous fun like most of the guy's movies. But instead a relaly insightful, deeply-felt story about not just the traditional "horrors of war" but also the evil that war brings out of otherwise normal men. Plus, it features great work from John C. Reilly (in his first big film performance) and Ving Rhames, a great score by Ennio Morricone and terrific jungle cinematography by Stephen Burum that looks incredibly rich and vibrant on the new Director's Cut DVD.