War

May 26, 2004 by Dennis Baker 

I am substituting U.S. History today. For two of the periods the students are watching the video Dear America: Letters Home From Vietnam. The documentary is good. If I was not sitting in front of a bunch of students I think I would be crying. The video is live footage voiceovered with real letters sent home along with the classic music of the time. Many times you are watching footage and pictures of the actual people who wrote the letters. The voice overs are done by some amazing actors: Dinero, Dafoe, Micheal J. Fox, Martin Sheen, Sean Penn, and Robin Williams to just to name a few.

I would recommend this video to anyone. HBO put this on back in 1988. HBO amazes me more and more with the quality of programming. Yea it can be argued they put on shows like Sex in the City, and The “L” Word. But they also put on make amazing shows such as The Sopranos, The Laramie Project, Angels in America, as well as this documentary.

I am currently sitting in front of a poster that compares the Vietnam War to the Korean War. Personally, two of the least talked about wars. In Vietnam there were 47,382 soldiers that died and 153,303 wounded. In Korea it was 54,246 wounded and 103,284 wounded. My initial thought would have been that Vietnam would have had more dead soldiers, shows how little I was taught about the Korean War.

While watching the video I can’t help but of thinking of the current war in Iraq. I don’t express my opinion hardly about it due to the main reason that my opinion seems to change daily (David Hopkins May 24th post does not help my opinion). But what I do think of is the weekend Karen and I went to Santa Barbara and people had set up a grave sight on the beach with a cross up for each soldier who had died in Iraq. There were too many crosses…

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