What We Can Learn from Iwo Jima.

It is 5:30 in the morning and Jackson will not sleep, so instead I decided to finish watching Letters from Iwo Jima. I found it an interesting film, it was very long and all in subtitles, yet it taught two important lesions. First a universal theme when it comes to warfare: politicians make war, yet it is regular people who fight and die. In the war I am most familiar with, the Civil War, this concept was expressed as “a rich man’s war, and a poor man’s fight.” This saying came about when both sides allowed the wealthy to pay for substitutes to replace them in the draft. In the Confederacy, for every 20 slaves one white was exempt from fighting, so only those with large amounts of slaves got out of the fight. But this concept is the same for every war and for every people. As seen in the movie, the baker just wanted to go home to his family, he did not understand why he was required to fight and die for an island that they could not hold. This same movie can be made for any army in any time. A movie could be made about average Germans during WWII. Hitler was evil, but the common soldier who was fighting was not much different than the American he was fighting against. Anyone who has read Alls Quite On The Western Front knows that common German soldiers did not always want to fight (WWI Book). However, this is not an anti-war post. I am anti-war, but I do believe there are times when armies must fight. I refuse to use the term pro-war, no one is pro-war, but understand sometimes war is necessary. My cousin is in Iraq right now, and I hope and pray this war can end soon and he can come home, but not if the consequences are negative for the US and the middle east. What this movie shows is something I am sure we all know, war is hell, and we can hate the enemy, but need to know the soldiers are just like us. I understand this is easy for me to say, I have never fought in war and the movie does not show the thousands of Americans who died taking the island, or the tourture Americans endured at the hands of Japaneses soldiers

Having said this, I believe this current war is different. Germans fought for the Fatherland, Japanese for their Emperor, Confederates and Union soldiers both fought for their idea of freedom, and so on. When your nation asks, people have always gone to war. But what are Al Qaeda soldiers fighting for, not for freedom; we are trying to make Iraq free. An Iraq soldier can fall into the same category as the movie, but a terrorist suicide bomber murdering innocent people out of a sick religious concept is something different. I may not agree with what Japanese soldiers fought for, but in some way can respect what they did, but there is no respect for our current enemy, they chose to do what they are doing, not out of loyalty to their nation, or even their religion (most Muslims are not terrorists), this current enemy is choosing to do evil, it is not forced on them. They do not deserve the respect or the rights other enemy soldiers deserve.

The other point the movie helps demonstrate, though I am sure Eastwood did not intend for, is to help justify Truman’s decision to drop the bomb. As Truman’s defenders have always argued, the Japanese sense of honor would not have allowed them to surrender Japan. One of the pro-bomb arguments was that dropping the bomb would save Japanese lives, and I believe the movie backs this. Asshown in the movie, the Japanese would fight till death, even over a lost cause. The last charge in the movie was not about winning, but saving honor and dying. Dropping the two bombs, allowed the Japanese to surrender without shame. It is horrible to to kill so many, but in the end it is justifiable in order to save American lives, and possibly Japanese lives as well.