Uhhhh… you DO realize Republicans have been screeching about a new civil war for years, right?
There is a HUGE portion of this country that would ABSOLUTELY bomb their neighbors if they could get away with it. A civil war might not destroy everything, but that’s only happening to the Palestinians. The US is too big to repeat that travesty.
I think the only country that’s legit happened to was Iraq,
Usually it’s more about how traumatized the POWs captured by your country’s soldiers were. Unbroken being the major cinematic example, and all the stories about Senator McCain refusing early release and being tortured for it and the guy who blinked reports of torture out in morse code while reading a hostage statement in Vietnam being the more “stuff of legends” examples.
American Sniper is the only one I’ve seen where it’s about how some soldier who didn’t experience anything above the typical background humm of war felt about the whole thing.
Probably because being a US military troop is the least dangerous it’s ever been, so the major condition most troops will face isn’t death or permanent injury, but instead PTSD from having faced combat or Survivor’s guilt from having been suddenly shifted off the rare doomed mission or patrol that still claims casualties at the last second.
Most enlisted troops are just career workers in camo with a REALLY rigorous on the job fitness program. There’s a reason the US is everyone’s intel and logistics repository, and it’s because for every dollar spent on actually fighting, ten get spent on building up so much intelligence that the deck is as stacked as it can be before the cards even come out of the box to be dealt.
Vietnam movies were usually either about POW experiences or about the absolute pointlessness of it all, which doesn’t really line up with “bombing your country and then making movies about how sad it made them”
I have literally never seen a depiction of Vietnam that was positive or shy of direct condemnation of how terrible it all was.
Seriously, even Forrest Gump’s innocent portrayal of it still managed to underline in bold that it was all pointless, needless, and cruel beyond reason.
As others have said there’s a bunch more, but the one that really grinds my gears is The Covenant
We really spent 20 years telling these terps they and their families would be safe, then just fucking left and made a MOVIE about that shitty bullshit underhanded move?
Put every single goddamn joint chief in front of congress and ask why this is a fictional tale