"Sobering to the soul"
HBO's war miniseries as a contemporary metaphor
"Sobering to the soul"
Dick Polman, Inquirer National Political Columnist
During last night's debut of The Pacific, the new World War II epic on HBO, one scene on Guadalcanal stood out - if only for its meditative power.
As the Marines sort out the Japanese bodies after a night skirmish, they come upon a live one. Two medics, being decent life-affirming Americans, rush over to lift the wounded enemy to his feet and haul him away for treatment - whereupon the soldier detonates a grenade hidden in his hand, blowing himself and his helpers to pieces. The American boys, dumfounded and outraged, scream racial epithets at the now-decimated suicide bomber. Meanwhile, an unscathed, unarmed Japanese survivor emerges from the jungle and rails boastfully at the heavily armed Americans, who proceed to use him as target practice, wounding him repeatedly in order to keep him alive and prolong the sport - until one of our protagonists, Pfc. Robert Leckie, perhaps seeking to avenge the deaths of comrades the night before, or (more likely) simply seeking to do the "right" thing, stops the grotesque game by dropping the soldier with a fatal shot. As Leckie later ruminates in a letter home, "There are things that men can do to each other that are sobering to the soul."
The Pacific will undoubtedly enlighten millions of ahistorical Americans who view World War II largely through the lens of D-Day and the liberation of Europe. In truth, the war in the East was far more brutal. Not even Hitler could rival the Japanese as conquerers. Hitler enslaved 225 million people in four time zones; the militarists in Tokyo subsumed 400 million people over a span of seven times zones and 20 million square miles (including water). And unlike regular German troops, the Japanese considered surrender an act of shame. As historian Max Hastings points out in Retribution, his new and indispensible book, the American casualty rate in that war theater "was three and a half times greater than that of Europe." Say hello to the 115-degree heat on the tiny island of Peleliu, where 1,950 Americans perished in a siege that military experts, even at the time, considered strategetically unimportant.
But the miniseries - Episode One is available online - will be more than a mere educational tool. Over the next 10 weeks, it'll be impossible to watch this grim ode to the "good war" without pondering the aforementioned line from Robert Leckie, and placing it in a 21st-century context.
We obviously - rightly - see ourselves today as the good guys fighting an endless twilight war against an implacable terrorist enemy that refuses to surrender; the question is, how should we grapple with the inevitable moral ambiguities? How can we wage this war - in fact, can we wage this war - without compromising ourselves in ways "that are sobering to the soul," and that indeed could compromise the humanistic self-image of American exceptionalism?
Historian Douglas Brinkley writes this week that the miniseries tackles "age-old and current questions about the barbarity of war: How can Americans ask our young men and women to indiscriminately kill a shadowy enemy and then return to their ordered Coca-Cola lives stateside?" (The Hurt Locker had an answer to that question. The bomb expert got so hooked on the violence that he could't abide living stateside, so he went back to Iraq for more.)
But the questions prompted by The Pacific are not merely about the troops. Even as we watch these HBO combatants descend into hell while fighting to hang onto their humanity, we may be tempted to think again about the disputes that plague us today. What's the best way to adjudicate captured terrorists? What's the best way to question them? Is the most effective way always the moral way? Is it fatally "sobering to the soul" for Americans to launch covert assassination plots, as evidenced by the revelations this morning about the use of private contractors in Afghanistan and Pakistan?
Americans, of course, are already polarized in their responses to those kind of questions, and no doubt this polarization will persist, and even become more sharpened over the next 10 weeks, among those who view The Pacific as contemporary metaphor. There are no easy answers in this ongoing debate about ends and means. But the good news, at least, is that thanks to HBO's efforts, millions of people will no longer be humming the kitschy Rogers and Hammerstein show tunes from South Pacific.
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Who can resist this piece about "Johnny?" Not me.
Mr. Polman, I'm confused. You speak of this implacable terrorist enemy, but do not name it. Are you talking about al-Quaeda, or the Keep America Safe wing of the Republican Party?— Yersinia Pestis- MOCKYveada: Here are 5 more Bush-Cheney accomplishments for your enjoyment! Aah, the pleasure of the trip down memory lane. Was it good for you too? .............. 106. LOOP HOLE added to TARP at the last minute by Paulson to guarantee to give banks an easy out of responsibility. ................... 107. BUSH USED NAT'L. GUARD as a draft to conduct war in Iraq. .................. 108. ROVE'S EXEC. PRIV. to extend into next admin., because of legal maneuvering by Bush lawyers. It's the effort and not the success or failure of same. .................. 109. NON-BUSHIES FIRED from career government jobs to politicise government offices in all areas. ....... 110. GITMO NUMBERS FUDGED JUSTIFICATION to keep the facility open. The numbers were cooked to show detainees returning to war, when being directly jailed in another country after release equaled returning to the battlefield. The numbers were all over the place, like 55 when there were only 3.— Talvenada
- To the Angry Left, America is a dirty, evil country.— CD75
- Wow- the commie twins on it early today. Dick- the line does resonate, and there is really no true answer. I'm excited for the Pacific. I've seen Band of Brothers multiple times, and have read some books about the Pacific War (flags of our father, etc) and its great that people will be educated on what was maybe the nastiest war ever.....maybe next Hanks and Spielberg can take on the forgotten war, Korea. (David Halberstamn's Coldest Winter was a real eye-opener)— tjm333126
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Liberals can see the bad in liberating Europe and Asia in WWII, but can't see anything bad about Obamacare.— jmc- CD75, mature adults can work to make things better and love our country. Being able to speak out and demand that our country does the right thing is what democracy is all about. Just because we strive to do better doesn't mean we hate our country. While most americans would say they are against killing enemies we capture, I don't judge what these people did. I wasn't in their place and could never understand what they've gone through. Remember, what we do to our enemies will be done to american soldiers who are prisoners of war. How can we say that we are against our soldiers being tortured if we torture?— MikeP
- Sherman's apt observation that "war is hell" was a gross understatement when it came to the war in the Pacific. I'm sure the miniseries will try hard to do so, but I don't think viewers will be able to subjectively learn just how horrific it was. The first installment did not even come close to teaching this lesson. Heck, the series could ten times more installments and I don't think it could get the point across.— AHiredGun
- Sorry, bag o cheese, you are completely wrong. The greatest generation fought for american ideals. They fought to preserve the american culture. There was a reason why germans fled towards the americans as the war reached it's final days. Americans weren't raping and murdering civilians. What's the point of fighting a war if it means we lose everything worth fighting for? The people who won WWII didn't reject american values after the war. What happened after WWII is what these people fought for. And, no, I don't have an issue with health care reform. I do have an issue with Republicans telling lies about it to scare people though.— MikeP
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- Bag - Job 1 is to win - no argument there. However we do not want to become what we are fighting. We must win while keeping our morals and values. And despite all the bs that will come from the right - we do not need torture to gain information from our prisoners. If it were so good - why don't we torture criminal defendants ???— FormerGOPer
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- I wish I had HBO. However, I'm sure that this series will come out on DVD at a later date. My father was a Marine in the Pacific during WWII. I remember some of his stories of brutality. Even more, I remember being awakened in the middle of the night by his nightmares. And I wasn't even born until 1950, so the horrors stayed with him for a long time. I agree with formerGOPer and MikeP that if we lose common decency and our core values while fighting a war, how can we possibly win, whatever the outcome of battles?— NigeltheMastiff
Cited by the Columbia Journalism Review as one of the nation's top political reporters, and lauded by the ABC News political website as "one of the finest political journalists of his generation," Dick Polman is a national political columnist at the Philadelphia Inquirer. He is on the full-time faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, as "writer in residence." Dick has been a frequent guest on C-Span, MSNBC, CNN, NPR and the BBC. He covered the 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004 presidential campaigns.
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