> I remember when I was with Special Forces... seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate some children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn't see. We went back there, and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember... I... I... I cried, I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out; I didn't know what I wanted to do! And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it... I never want to forget. And then I realized... like I was shot... like I was shot with a diamond... a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought, my God... the genius of that! The genius! The will to do that! Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we, because they could stand that these were not monsters, these were men... trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love... but they had the strength... the strength... to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men, our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral... and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling... without passion... without judgment... without judgment! Because it's judgment that defeats us
was he right?
>>28096273
>le noble savage meme
in short, no.
Long movie answer: did you watch the movie? 5 guys, a boat with an M60, and a radio exterminated the whole subculture of kurtz's cambodian cannibal zoo.
real life long answer: are you fucking retarded?
>>28096273
well that was the CIAs line of thought and the Phoenix Program worked pretty well
>>28096286
You're an idiot.
>>28096307
> mfw reading the wikipedia article about the phoenix program
jesus fucking christ
>>28096336
Rape, gang rape, rape using eels, snakes, or hard objects, and rape followed by murder
>>28097065
>>28096336
>>28096307
Don't forget the Japanese American CIA agent running it.
>>28097065
Got a boner
>>28096286
The VC weren't savages, they were mainly kids out of the cities who supported Vietnamese nationalism or were forcibly conscripted.
Kurtz was trying to say that, although the enemy could not realistically win, neither could we, because unlike the enemy, we were trying to fight a "clean" war. And of course trying to do that results in nothing more than a farce, as we saw in the film. The VC prevailed, according to Kurtz, because they were able to suspend their morality and perform horrible, brutal acts whenever such acts were necessary to secure victory.
Needless to say, none of this reflects actual history, but it's an interesting idea regardless.
We should have inoculated all of them. A generation of one armed rebels wouldn't have been particularly effective.
speirs said it better and without the hippie jargon
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5YpUsDsHmk
you need to have both passion to do war but compassion to no when to stop. Too much of either will get you or others killed
>>28096273
Whole thing was just a ripoff of Heart of Darkness. You want the real message read that.
>>28096273
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th8Y2V0qumE
Very related, shame the scene was deleted
>>28096307
>Phoenix Program worked pretty well
Except it really didn't.
