Platoon crítica y análisis (inglés)

Platoon appreciation of war (and life)

Pol Serrano. Barcelona

As Clausewitz said, War is a mere continuation of politics by other means. And so in the movie, Vietnam War is framed in the bipolar world after the Second World War, were the two main powers in the world were the USA and the URSS. The Vietnam War was one of the conflicts fought by the Americans to try to stop the advance of communism in the republics of Indochina. The strategy was to implement democracy and capitalism in the republics freed by the Americans and therefore to establish a relation with those countries to counter balance the soviet power.

In fact, the Vietnam changed the view of the classic way of war. No more big armies clashing in a clear battlefield, like happened in continental wars. For the sake of an example, Americans had in mind the game of chess, were the victory comes easier by “killing” the enemy’s pieces. However, the American strategy was not appropriate in the Vietnamese battlefield. As we have seen in Platoon, the war is waged by using commandos, or small platoons introduced in to the jungle to fight the hidden soldiers, and resist traps and ambushes. The main aim of that war was more than kill the enemies but to control territory.

It’s been said that when Saigon fell due to the American withdraw, Coronel Harry Summers met North Vietnamese leaders no negotiate the terms of the peace, and he told to the Viet Cong leaders that they have never “win the Americans in any engagement.” The Vietnamese leaders answered that it was “true, but that it was also irrelevant”.

Why it did not matter? Because the fact was that at the beginning of the war, the American support toward Vietnam was at 80%. At the end, it fell at 20%. Therefore, even if the Americans were winning the engagements, the hippy revolution in America would not permit more death people, hence, the war was not politically affordable. The war was over.

Finally, we have to analyse the place were the war was fought. Vietnam was a dirty backwater full of mosquitoes and snakes. It is a huge difference between the American geography, were we rarely find such a humid and full of insects place. That made the Asiatic destiny quite unpleasant and very annoying.

On the other hand, the soldiers engaged in Vietnam, suffered a quick deterioration: High consumption of marihuana, alcohol, opium and morphine; the unpleasant conditions of the place; and add to that the usual angst of the common soldier, who knew that he could not return from the next raid. Nihilism was the main creed. Thus, the newbie’s crews that came from America died in the first mission or suffered the corruption of the place. Henceforth, the freshmen’s arrived from America were not enough strong to resist the corruption, nor enough strong to impose good manners. Therefore, Vietnam was, in every aspect, a hard nut to crack.

The movie inherently represents the resonant aphorism attributed to Plaute; namely, “Homo homini lupus est”. As Hobbes put it in his De Cive (1651) “Man to Man is an errant Wolfe”. And following the argument, mankind has an inherent conflict within and among fellow citizens. Linking the previous statement, we arrive to Heraclitus, who said, “War is the father of all and king of all”; it is quite a realist statement. He says, sharp, “Conflict does not interfere with life, but rather is a precondition of life”. Mixing the two classics, we have a dangerous kind.

Platoon is not an anti-war film. Or at list it is more than that. Platoon exemplifies the stark contrast between morals politics and power politics. It is the Machiavelli sentence: “The end justifies the means”.

To Sgt Bob Burns, the ruthless bloodthirsty soldier, the end always justifies the means. So if he has to shoot a young little girl to obtain some kind of information related to the enemy’s position, he will. On the other side, there is Sgt Elias, picturing the moral politics view; so he is waging war in a moral sense: he will not win at any price, he has principles.

The picture between moral and power politics is represented at the beginning. The first approach with Sgt Burns is with a death body. Chris Taylor vomits when he sees the Vietcong death body and Sgt Burns goes: “What the hell is the matter with you Taylor? You are a simple son of a bitch”. On the other side, the approach with Sgt Elias is quite different. He advises him nicely “next time [we go out] you check with me, all right?” Therefore, the situations framed are quite different. Elias is quite a candid person, naïve at times. Burns is a merciless soldier; to him war is not a mean to an end, but a purpose for itself.

By confronting those two characters, Stone is explaining two ways of waging war. Stone’s message is that being the candid Elias does not represent the best way to survive and vanquish the enemy; nor is the Burns way, which ends killing itself. But the two features would make the perfect soldier. The perfect soldier would be Taylor, who has the courage to stop the rape of a Vietnamese girl, but the guts to get dirty and kill Burns. It’s the basics of Machiavelli: to do good, we sometimes have to behave badly.