Customer Reviews

Winter Soldier

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Everybody over the age of 12 and under the age of 30 needs to see this film. (Wouldn't hurt older people either: pull your kid's ipod away and make them watch this...)

Someone said: those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. Well, this is the history we forgot, and are now repeating. What is worse, having our young people offered up as cannon-fodder for hailburton, or turning them into murderers and torturers at Haditha, Abu Grahib and how many other places? This film illustrates how it all happened before just as it's happening now.

I disagree with the Amazon reviewer who finds the film artless and boring after an hour. It's a differenet aesthetic, not trying to zap you or entertain, but build a slow cumulation of facts. It does get more and more depressing but that's the point. And the best part of the film is the last section, which focuses on Scott Camil, and delivers a small message of hope: this man has re-evaluated his humanity, and has changed for the better. (BTW, Camil is the infamous VVAW 'terrorist' John Kerry failed to turn in for supposedly proposing to bomb something or other in some meeting -- interesting to look at the real person here...) The point is that as individuals and perhaps as a nation, even though we may have done horrible things, we can find a redemption by coming clean, coming correct, and witnessing for peace and justice.

War is always ugly. It seems to me that ever since Vietnam, we have been searching for some way to redeem ourselves from the stench of My Lai and free fire zones; searching for another WWII, another "good war" . But war is never good and what is required of troops in war must be looked at in terms of more than winning and losing, but with a keen sense of cost. At what cost do we send men, and now women, into battle. Winter Soldiers requires us to scrutinize that cost and not turn away from the agony our troops endure.

125 soldiers testified at the Winter Soldier hearings. Their stories of rape and torture and random killing so terrified the Nixon Whitehouse that a "plumbers" type group was set up to discredit them. The only piece of information to come from that thorough investigation was the fact that Al Hubbard was an enlisted man and not an officer. No, he didn't say he had served in Vietnam, in fact he didn't testify at the Winter Soldier hearing at all. A 30+ year orchestrated disinformation campaign has managed to turn one miniscule fib into a complete slander of 125 honorable veterans.

Winter Soldier isn't about valor or lack of valor. It is about war and what happens in war. It should be required viewing for each and every Congress Member, each and every time they vote from the comfort of their chambers to send young people into the depths of hell. It should be required viewing by every American before we spend one more penny on Iraq or even consider another mission unaccomplished in Iran. War is a failure of civilization, not the means by which we expand it.

I first watched this film only one week ago. It is the most informative documentary I have ever seen about the war in vietnam. I am much to young to have experienced the sixties however this film brings me ever closer the finding out what went on in america during that crucial period in history.

We watched a double feature of Winter Soldier and Sir, No Sir (the recent documentary about the protest movement within the Vietnam War troops) a few weeks ago. The telling of stories that are true and heart-breaking is still with me. I know we will be hearing similar stories from the Iraq War, and we will be devastated because we KNEW. We KNEW from experience what war brings to young men and women, and we went ahead anyway.

At the Vietnam Wall memorial in Washington one can talk with the veterans of that war. Whether or not they were a part of the protest movement, or were supporters of that war, the effects of the rape of a country are with them still.

We will have many more ravaged souls after the current conflict ends.

I saw this movie on TV the day before Thanksgiving and just couldn't beleive it, it may be the most important documentary ever made. The very first veteran interviewed talks about how it was fairly common practice for vietnamese POWs to be thrown from airborne aircraft and everything just spirals downward from there. The movie shows normal everyday americans talking about some of the most horrible things imaginable. Veterans often laugh and chuckle while recounting these things and then you see their faces going from amusement to guilt and shame in the blink of an eye. This literally shows how war is hell and I think should be required viewing in all high schools.

Soldiers testifying about their actions during the Vietnam War. Mandatory viewing for anyone interested in the war, or war in general.

j.w.k.

Being a retired Air Force Officer and in the military when this film was made, it brought back many sad and disturbing memories. I know the truth of this as although not on the ground in Viet Nam I listened to enough first-hand accounts. This is what happens in every war. It is especially common in wars such as Viet Nam and Iraq where the "enemy" does not wear uniforms and blends into the population. Put 18, 19 and 20 year old soldiers in the mix of terror and chaos and even some of the best breakdown. Where leadership is absent disaster happens. Bush and his staff who never came close to this scene should watch this film. War should always be the very last resort. So very unfortunate that this film has been seen by so few.

I am rather fond of invoking, especially in writing of the American Revolution that we have just again celebrated, Tom Paine's little propaganda piece in defense of that revolution which hails the winter soldiers of 1776 for staying at their posts when others either ran away or became faint-hearted at the prospects of defeating the bloody English. It is those efforts by those long ago winter soldier that other leftists and I have honored in the past and continue to honor today. We will leave the hollow holiday rhetoric and mindless flag waving to the sunshine patriots. Needless to say, given the title of the film under review, I am not the only one who appreciates that description and the producers here, I believe, have caught the essence of the spirit of those long ago winter soldiers in this documentary about the rank and file soldier-driven investigation into the atrocities and horrors produced by the American military in the Vietnam War in 1971.

It is an old hoary truism, if not now something of a cliché, that war does not bring out humankind's nobler instincts. For a very recent example one need look no further back than at the newspaper headlines of the past few years concerning various atrocities and acts of torture committed by the American military in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, Iraq and Afghanistan are hardly the first time that the American military has been exposed acting in less than its self-proclaimed `agent of liberation' role in its various imperial adventures. If one rolls the film of history back to the last generation, for those who have forgotten or were not around, Vietnam presents that same story. As against prior wars two things made awareness that something had gone horribly wrong possible in Vietnam. First, Vietnam was the first televised war and at some point it became impossible for the military to hide everything that it was doing. Secondly, a small critical mass of American military personnel, mainly those rank and file personnel who actually carried out military policy, wanted to clear the air of their complicity in that policy.

Needless to say, an investigation into atrocities and torture is not something that the American military establishment wished to have aired in public (and as the fate of this film indicates raised hell to successfully keep it out of the major media markets of the time). That establishment was much more comfortable with internal governmental investigations or whitewashes of their actions as occurred, ultimately, in the case of My Lai. However the traumatic reaction of a significant element of the rank and file soldiery in Vietnam caused this 'unofficial' investigation to take place. For those who grew up, like this reviewer, believing something of Lincoln's expression that the American democratic experience was the `last, best hope for mankind' this was not pretty viewing. For one, also like the reviewer, who was a soldier during the Vietnam War period and who had friends and `buddies' just like those that populate this documentary it was doubly hard. But, dear reader, for the most part what the citizen-soldiers- our brothers, sons and other relatives- have to say here needed to be said.

Naturally in a documentary that films an investigation into atrocities, torture and military standard operating procedure (SOP) during the Vietnam War the interviewees are going to be a little more articulate, a little more remorseful and a lot more angry than the average soldier who went through Vietnam came home and tried to forget the experience. These soldiers had an agenda- and that agenda was to get their buddies- the troops still in Vietnam- home. Nevertheless one must be impressed by the way they expressed themselves -sometimes haltingly, sometimes inarticulately, sometimes from some depth that we have no understanding of. Moreover, their testimony has the ring of truth. Not the SOP military truth but this truth- humankind has a long way to go before it can, without embarrassment, use the word civilized to describe itself. No, my friends, these were not our soldiers but, they were our people-these were the winter soldiers of the Vietnam War.

Having spent almost 6 years in the military during Viet Nam I'm really sick and tired of all the non-military types trying to dig up dirt and portray soldiers as murderers and torturers. Far too many of these so called "witnesses" were stoned out druggies during their tour of duty in Viet Nam and had to justify their lack of real military service by "confessing" to crimes that they "witnessed".
Anyone who has served in combat and been shot at knows that war is hell and will do what it takes to survive and go home. The so-called "victims of torture" at Abu Grahib were treated like girl scouts compared to the treatment that American POW's received at the hands of the Vietnamese and Bravo Two Zero received at the hands of the Iraqis. This is trash...pure and simple....and REAL soldiers who watch this will realize that.

Sure, some soldiers committed crimes in the Vietnam war. BUT, don't let their professed behavior cloud your perspective into believing it was widespread amongst all combat units. Most of our soldiers served their country with honor and performed the difficult task with dignified integrity. They performed a duty that few wanted to do, they served their country instead of dodging the draft and fleeing to Canada. Remember the atrocious treatment heaped on our soldiers as pow's by the north vietnamese and the countless horrors perpetrated against the south vietnamese people by the north vietnamese and viet cong. We were the good guys.