"You can't handle the truth!"

While I was home over the weekend, the film "A Few Good Men" was on some cable station and I had it on as background noise while eating dinner. I like that movie - I bet the play is even better because theatre is always better than any movie.

Anyway, my wife and I were talking about the election or some such, and I ended up talking about the War. We were talking about waging war on TV and the like and the fact you (a nation) can't win a war on TV because no one wants to know how it is won, just the fact that the war is won. It hit me, suddenly, just what Col. Jessep's speech during the court marshal actually meant. Like a lightning bolt, boom. And to think I've been watching this movie for years and never got it. But I digress...

Col. Jessep says "You can't handle the truth!" And he is right. His speech goes on to say things about walls and men with guns and how freedom is defended by walls and men with guns. He elaborates further by saying (paraphrase here) that deep down inside "you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall" and that "I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to you". The key here in understanding Jessep is this: people want their freedoms defended, but they don't want to know how that is actually accomplished. We won World War II and at the time no one really knew how we were winning until most of the shots had been fired. News was being censored quite well, as were personal letters from the fronts. If WWII had been on TV like Vietnam and Iraq, Europe would be speaking German now.

Anyway, the point of this analytical exercise is the obvious realization of something that I had been expounding on for years - that you cannot win wars on TV. Nations want to win wars, but the people don't really want to know how the wars are won, not until much, much later, when it no longer matters but to academics and armchair generals. Is this a cynical view of a modern, democratic, and supposedly educated society? Some would say so. Others would say it is an statement of how things are. The Abu Ghraib incident is the perfect example. In WWII, we would never have known about it until many years after the fact.

So, the real question is this: can you handle the truth of war, or is it better for you to turn a blind eye and be glad for victory? Think about it...