Bill Moyers Journal (2007-2010); 1333; Director Oliver Stone

This week on Bill Moyer's Journal. Sometimes it takes fiction to help us grasp reality. You know what the definition of insanity is? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. War is insane. Afghanistan is insane. Oliver Stone, writer, director, soldier on War Then and Now. Stay tuned. Funding for Bill Moyer's Journal is provided by the Partridge Foundation, a John and Polly Gut Charitable Fund, Park Foundation, dedicated to heightening public awareness of critical issues,

the Colbert Foundation, the Herb Alpert Foundation, Marilyn and Bob Clements and the Clements Foundation, the Fetzer Institute, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Public Welfare Foundation, and by our sole corporate sponsor, Mutual of America, providing retirement, plant products and services to employers and individuals since 1945. Mutual of America, your retirement company. From our studios in New York, Bill Moyer's. Welcome to the Journal. A few days before President Obama's speech this week, some old friends wrote me about a death in their family. A young soldier ordered back to war for a third tour couldn't face it and took his own life. About the same time I read a report based on military records, which revealed that from 2003 to 2008, some 43,000 troops had been sent to Iraq and Afghanistan, despite having been classified as non-deployable for medical reasons.

In plain English, they weren't healthy enough to go, but were sent anyway. So I listened uneasily to the President, Tuesday night. He didn't say a word about the fact that the well is running dry. We're short on soldiers, and he asked none of the rest of us to sacrifice. Not even to pay for the war he says will defend us from terrorism here at home. Like George W. Bush before him, President Obama will fight this war with overworked soldiers under intolerable stress, and he will pay for it on credit in an economy already stretched to the cracking point. As Congressman David Obie said recently, the burden falls only on the soldiers and their families. They've had to go to the well again and again and again and again, and everybody else is blindly unaffected by the war. The events of this week prompted me to want to talk to a man who has been affected by the bitter experience of war firsthand, and has used his artistic talents to show us what combat is like for the soldiers who wage it. Through a series of powerful motion pictures, Oliver Stone has demonstrated that fiction is often the best way to digest reality.

The writer and director has been here in New York recently on the front lines of a different kind of battlefield, finishing a sequel to one of his hit movies Wall Street. But once again, Michael Douglas is playing Gordon Gecko, the character who made greed as good a mantra for the kind of high-risk high-rollers who have suckered our economy into its current predicament. But that's not why I wanted to talk with Stone. He was wrapping his new movie, just as Barack Obama was committing 30,000 more American troops to Afghanistan. And Oliver Stone's a man who knows more about what it's like to be a soldier than any other filmmaker. In 1967, not yet 21 years old, and at the height of the fighting in Vietnam, he enlisted and then volunteered for combat. He fought through the Tet Offensive and Beyond. Wounded twice, he was awarded the Purple Heart twice, and the Bronze Star for extraordinary acts of courage on the fire. When Oliver Stone returned from Vietnam, he enrolled at New York University, studying on the GI Bill,

and made this short film in which he played a Vietnam vet wondering lonely through the city. He's been wrestling with those experiences for years, expressing his feelings through a trilogy of motion pictures about Vietnam. Platoon, which one Oscars for best picture and for his directing. Born on the 4th of July, the story of an embittered cripple soldier returning for more. I serve my country, and I don't want you to feel sorry for me. They're not shed at here. But as it had happened to our village for so many centuries, we rebuilt our lives. And heaven and earth about a young Vietnamese woman's life shattered by the fighting that devastated her country. Oliver Stone, thanks for coming. Thank you Bill. Let's talk first about the President's decision. The President went to some length Tuesday night to say that Afghanistan is not Vietnam. But are there some lessons from your own experience in Vietnam that the President should be aware of?

You cannot win the hearts and minds of people if you invade their country with soldiers. Invade them with schools with help. And the basic security required. But do not invade them with grunts who don't know anything about the local customs. The moment you send these patrols, as we did in Iraq, into villages. You offend the people. Wherever I've been in the world, I've traveled extensively. The Vietnamese wanted us out. The Afghans are happy to take our money. They know the Americans are coming. This means money. Everybody can cut a deal with the Americans. Even the Taliban can be paid by the Americans. Well, that apparently is what the Washington hope that we might be able to, as with the purchase of the Afghans, be able to buy it off as we did in Iraq. Well, people are... People are inconceivable. Well, we can buy our way through this now. At the end of the day, they'll take the money, but they'll go their own way. They're fiercely independent. As with the Vietnamese, by the way, I always thought of the Vietnamese as warrior hands. They never gave up. I don't know if you remember the slaughter they went through.

We killed so many of them. But they kept coming. They never gave up because they were fierce and nationalistic. We're running the risk of alienating the nationalism of the postune peoples, which is an extensive tribe in that area of Afghanistan. And they will now be offended enough to really link up with the nutcases of the Taliban, so that these two groups will come together. So we will now be fighting a real war. And this will be out of our control. This will be the end. We will be sucked into a massive war where we will be bombing extensively again, like in Vietnam. Why do you think he's doing this? When he had so much public support, we're not doing it because this is a key question. And I think many people are asking themselves that today. Why? I mean, he was the reform candidate, the agent of change. And here he's pursuing Bush III policy. I'm shocked by... I thought that he had... I know that he's an intelligent man. I know that... And many smart Americans are saying, I know he knows something. I don't know.

But I heard that argument all the way back to Vietnam. You know, I said, well, we must be going into Iraq, a George Bush senior, because they know something I don't know. Why don't believe that anymore? I really don't. I'm past that stage of my life. Iraq, too. We know that they lied to us. We know that the government is quite capable of manipulating intelligence. And who knows, in this case, what Obama is actually getting from his intelligence sources. Some of the intelligence people are against the move. So what wiggle room did he have? I mean, you and I both know that if there were another attack on America, not the Pakistan necessarily, but from Afghan soil, Obama would be finished, and so would his party. What wiggle room did he have given the fact, as you just said, his options were framed by the Bush chain of years? Well, from Afghanistan, I mean, from the caves between of really its poshornistan, which would be the area of the borderlands between Pakistan and Afghanistan. That's where you're suggesting that. The attack may have been planned there, but it was really planned by Sheikh Mohammed all over the world. He planted in Hamburg. He planted in America.

They're in America. The terrorism is a disease. It can happen like cancer, like drugs. It comes from everywhere. It can come from our cities. So it doesn't have to be originating in Afghanistan. I don't believe that it will. I think that Al-Qaeda is only 100 people there left in those borders, in those caves, according to James Jones. On October, he made a statement in CNN. That's the President's National Security Council. There's 100 Al-Qaeda left at best. They could not mount any serious attack. But what they do have is influence. And influence is mighty. So all the Muslim young people that are coming up, all over in Canada and in America, they're the ones who may do something. And if we send 30,000 American kids, grunts who are not special troops at all, over there, into their homeland, like we did in Saudi Arabia before Iraq won, and like we did in Iraq, too, when we went into Baghdad, we are going to alienate those people.

We're going to influence them, and we're giving a gift, a gift to Al-Qaeda's, and their influence will expand beyond what they really can do. But would you give them the benefit of the doubt on this? Perhaps he did decide that this was the thing to do, that if he went in quickly with a lot of force, he could might bring it to an early end. Is it conceivable to you that Obama could have said, you know, he did not campaign on getting out of Afghanistan. He campaigned on taking it seriously. So maybe he said this is the best way to bring it to a quick end. A war I didn't start. He may very well believe that, but I like Obama, but I think this is the tragic mistake. This is in a deeper way than just 30,000 men, because it's not going to be 30,000 men. It's a shadow army. We're talking to contractors alone in Vietnam. It was six soldiers to every contractor. So contractors get a free ride here. They're war profiteers. So if we're going to go up to 100,000 troops, we know that there's probably going to be another 30,000 contractors going in, maybe more.

I mean, I don't know how we can afford all this. It's going to be, it's a 50 billion a year now, but it's going to go up to 100 billion a year now. This war in Afghanistan, how is it going to pay for it? A million dollars a soldier according to the military. 100 billion a year. 100 billion a year. What about contractors and what we pay them, and what do we pay them to tell them about, and what about the CIA funds and the predator missiles that cost so much money in all this? I know a lot of people this week, truly wrestling with this. Asking the very question you're asking. There's a money going to come from. How is our so-called empire going to, it is an empire. How is our empire going to continue? What do you mean empire? We have an empire. We have 100 soldiers and 120 nations all around the world. All around the world. We have bases north of Afghanistan, as you know, and it changes monthly, but Kazakhstan, Erdistan, Turk, Turk-Minus, and all these names. We have rings around Soviet Russia, practically. We've been in Latvia, we've put NATO back in. America has grown huge, especially since the end of the Cold War. We expanded into the East.

NATO was never supposed to go East. Do you remember that? NATO was for Western Europe. It was never supposed to go East. Clinton took it to Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary. Bush expanded it. The Russians have a beef with us, and rightly so. We became very big after 1989, bigger than we ever were. And now we're going to pay the price. This decision by Obama, although seems minor, 30,000 men, I think it's major. I think this is very ominous. And I don't know at this time, because coming off the recession of where we are now, it doesn't make sense. It's like piling bricks on a donkey and piling so high the donkey is going to collapse. What would you have said to the president before he made his decision if you could have talked to him? Don't sell out now. I mean, the general's got you. You get into the presidency, and I think it's a trap. I would imagine you would know from Lyndon Johnson's experience. And he himself, and his tapes, was talking about the need to win in Vietnam.

Although in his bones, I think that Lyndon Johnson knew he could not win there. I mean, we billions of dollars were spent in Vietnam. Huge waste of money. And people got rich off the war. They always do. When I think of war, I think of money and patriotism. And Obama went out of his way to say that to read Vietnam into this was false history. I disagree completely. We always heard the story that the Vietnamese, if we didn't stop them in Vietnam, the dominoes would fall, Thailand would be next, Malaysia, and so forth. And they would come communism would come to the shores of California. And we hear it again and again. But it is also a fact that Afghanistan is where much of the attack was planned, 0-9-11. That did change the reality. Don't you think? You know, Afghanistan is just like Texas. It's just endless scrub. I don't think it means much. I think Pakistan is where the ballgame is.

Afghanistan is ridiculous to go to war there. It's like a wasteland. I mean, the people there are fighters. These people have been, they resisted the British, the Russians. I often felt that we are parallel in the Soviet Union. We fought the Soviet Union so hard from 1945 on. When they finally crumbled in 1991, it seems that our fate will follow the same course. I don't know why. I felt like we're locked. If your enemy dies, you may go on for a few years. But somehow we have the same sickness. I mean, there's no way people from the mainland of America can go over there and not intrude on these people. Just the fact that you can walk into a village with our uniforms and our guns is an intrusion on their way of life. It's an offense. The way that if soldier looks at a woman in a certain way, they take offense. The mentality is quite different than ours. It's another culture completely.

I don't understand why Obama, who knows about culture and he has an Indonesian background, too. I'm shocked that he could look to force. No good will come of using force in a foreign land. You make me think of that opening scene in a cartoon, one of the most memorable moments in American moviemaking. In my book, when the fresh Americans, like yourself, arrive in Vietnam and for the first time on that tarmac, they see those body bags. The innocence of Brawadi would say, yes. That's it. I know it's been a long time,

but what would you say to those new troops going to Afghanistan about combat based on your experience? I don't think it's going to be a happy experience for them. These are young men who are going to age fast. They're going to find themselves unwanted, unlike people who smile at you. You're never going to believe that they really like you. You don't know if they're going to stab you in the back or put a roadside bomb on the road when you go out. As you remember, the Vietnamese people were friendly, but dangerous. We didn't know who was who. They would come and work for us in the base camps that we built these huge Las Vegas where we had TXs, we were selling cars and TVs, often illegally. These products would make their way into the hands of the Viet Cong in the NVA. A lot of our stuff ended up on the wrong side of the fence. Same thing is true here. What can you say about the chaos of war? How does it manifest itself? How does the brain adjust to that chaos?

Or can it adjust to it? It multiplies. Violence gets violence. It just gets worse. The bombs go off. Innocence people get killed by accident. Mistakes happen. Take friendly fire. Remember, friendly fire in Vietnam? I think 20% of our casualties were killed by ourselves because mistakes happen. There's a scene from born on the 4th of July that's hard to take and impossible to forget. It's about friendly fire, the unintentional killing of your own comrades. What happened?

What happened? Well, you're ever involved in that? I'm sure it happened all the time. It was very dangerous in combat because you don't know where it's coming from. Sometimes the guy behind you would lose it and fire off. The guy who was killed in Afghanistan, Pat Tillman, great guy apparently, but he was killed by accident, playing his own troops. That happens a lot more, but the damage is collateral. It goes back not only into the dead who come back. It goes through that generation of families. They come back to the states. The kids are affected. The wife, the parents. Then you have the people who come back with the wounds, which are even worse in some cases. The concussions from Iraq, the brain damage. Far worse, they're saving more people in the battlefield now than they did in Vietnam. And as a result, you have more damaged people. What about the fear? Were you afraid there at times? Absolutely. Especially in the beginning. Frankly, I was trained well, but not particularly well.

We've got there. When you first see combat, it goes, it's like pro football. It goes much faster than you think. More awkwardly than you think. It's not particularly a grand or anything. You try to save your life and you see death and you get used to it. And after a few engagements, you get better at it. Better at it. You get better at it. Does the fear become blurred or numb as you do? Like patrolling in the crystallized fear. You have to lose the fear. You have to get past it. Because otherwise you're going to freeze up. How do you get past it? Sometimes, for example, you get angry. And that's not a good emotion either, but you get awfully, as they said, pissed off. In Vietnam, we had the issue of less control, but there was a lot of racism. As there is, and I think as there is in Iraq and Afghanistan, we didn't, a lot of soldiers lost their ability to differentiate between the villagers and the enemy, the idea of killing innocents. Fire, Mark, man, past one.

Fire, Mark, man. Speak, Mark. Speak, Mark. You are. What the fuck are you doing? What are you doing? Speak, Mark. Speak, Mark. Speak, Mark. Damn it. I want to know what happened. I don't know, sir. Uh, possible accident or discharge. You better get a speech team in there. Good bye, man. Get in there. Tell me how many we got. Move. Follow me. Follow me. There. Check it out. They're dead. They're dead. They're dead. They're dead. They're dead. They're dead. They're dead. They're dead. They're dead. Oh, God. We didn't do this that way. Oh, God. That's also going on in Afghanistan. There was a wedding party. A 50-people was attacked by a predator drone. I mean, we've set off bad hostility towards America among all those people.

And these are tribal people. They have big families. So we've probably pissed off 1,500 people. Yeah, that ferocity, that fear, it goes on with people kill babies by accident. They kill families. It's just happening now. It's the nature of war. We cannot operate in a foreign country. Once we intervene, America has this blocky reputation. It just cannot be done by our servicemen. What was it like to kill? Frankly, you get numbed out. I mean, you reach the place of desensitization. You shoot without thinking. You shoot because it's an instinct. Do you know who you're shooting at? Well, I was killing salt. We were killing the enemy. We were actually in conflict with the NVA and the jungle. But when we were in the villages, it was much more difficult. And I certainly saw American soldiers abuse villagers. Hit them, torture them. In some cases rape them, burn down their hoaches. I mean, we treated them badly. How did you come to terms with what happened to you?

And what did happen to you? A lot of things happened. I mean, the priests were their blessedness and would bless us before we went out in the field and basically tell us that God was on our side against the North Vietnamese. We went into situations that were... Let me just say that I came back desensitized another person, speaking another language, thinking another way, not believing. Anything I saw in Vietnam from the officer class down, they were badly mismanaged, badly fought war. It was tremendous waste of resources, money. I never saw an intelligent approach to the war, which I think could have been done, but it was never achieved. I mean, there were some very good officers. So they were World War II material. These guys had been through the real thing and career. And you would trust them. And also our master sergeants. I was working with... We were working with 40, 50-year-old master sergeants. They looked up to them. But in reality, they didn't know what they were doing in this struggle. They had no idea.

They were arrogant. They had come from World War II and they thought they could beat the Vietnamese. They didn't take it seriously. And we also had the attitude of heavy fire. As soon as you get opposition, you bring in heavy artillery. You even bring in planes and bombs if necessary. And you just bomb the hell out of the place, then you move forward again. You can't win war that way. You have to win that kind of a war. You're going to go guerrilla. You got to go guerrilla to guerrilla. You got to go in with what we're doing to some degree in Afghanistan. But it won't work. But you know, with special forces, especially trained soldiers. What they call... Jay Saka, joint special operations command. Which is where... McChrystal comes from there. It's a dirty war. McChrystal fought it. War's a dirty, right? Yeah, but, you know, they kill people. They assassinate people. It's like the Phoenix program. Maybe they've learned what you've learned about Vietnam. Maybe they'll do it different. Yeah, the Phoenix program. It did work to some degree. But there was an enormous collateral damage. They killed so many innocent people. Meal eye. Which I wanted to make a movie about. The massacre in Meal eye in March of 68 was based on faulty information gathered through Phoenix program.

Yeah, it was the Phoenix program for our viewers. It was the program by which V.C. Viet Cong and Vietnamese were picked up and tortured until... They told what they knew or made up what they told us. Oh, yes. But we also picked up school teachers, labor reformers. Anybody was thrown into the pan. You know, it was anybody who talked about change against the government. Anybody who expressed his desire for reform was lopped together with communists. Was there an experience where the illusions fell away? And you said to yourself, we're not the good guys. Yeah, I would say when I was wounded the second time, it was in January. I said, I'm in for it. I made him. I thought this was much more. I thought in terms of Hemingway and Jack London and... Joseph Conrad, you know, I was a literary young man. I was a cerebral young man. I had been to Yale. So this was all new to me. I couldn't even take notes in the field because it was so wet. It was another war. And all of a sudden I got real. And I think that was the best thing that ever happened to me in a way I got real. And why did you go?

You didn't want to go. You could have stayed in Yale. I wasn't happy with it. George Bush was in my class in 68. Class of 68. It wasn't my class. It wasn't my type of people. I didn't belong. I didn't know where I belonged, Bill. I just knew I didn't belong there. Did you feel you belonged... At first, when you arrived in Vietnam, did you think you belonged there? At the war? At the war? Well, I was feeling my way. And I don't think I am warrior at class, but I did my job. I did my... I did well as a soldier eventually. At first, I would be a typical ground. I made mistakes. I was wounded. Probably the first time I was wounded, I was shocked by my own men. I think Orogrenade Shrapnel blasts got me from my own... I believe so. The guy... It was his idiot behind me through Orogrenade. He didn't know what he was doing at night and landed close to me. There's a scene from Platoon where one of the soldiers is riding a ladder through the ground wall. I guess I've always been sheltered and special. I just want to be anonymous like everybody else.

Do my share for my country. Live up to what Grandpa did in the first war. Well, here I am. Anonymous all right. With guys nobody really cares about. They come from the end of the line most of them. Small towns you never heard of. Alaska Tennessee. Brandon, Mississippi. Pork Band, Utah. Long from Pennsylvania. Two years high school is about it. Maybe if they're lucky a job waiting for them back in the factory. But most of them got nothing. They're poor. They're the unwanted. Yet they're fighting for our society and our freedom. It's weird isn't it? At the bottom of the barrel and they know it. Maybe that's what they call themselves grunts. Because a grunt can take it. It can take anything. And the best I've ever seen Grandma, the heart and soul. And now what do you think about that? I think they were good people. I don't think we were fighting for freedom of America. No.

What were you fighting for? Our lives survival. Most of those guys that I met were counting the days until they de-roast. They got out. In other words, they were fractured units, the 25th infantry. We'll go in. I had 300 days left or 365 days left. The next guy next to me had 27 days left. That's all we're doing. Trying to get out alive. Of course the Bee Gees said stay alive. I'll be back with Oliver Stone. But first, this is one of those times when we take a short break so you can go to your phone or computer and pledge your support of this public television station. The station needs your help now more than ever and is waiting for you to be in touch. Thank you. Oh, I meant to say that. Yeah, about the martial press. We could have been there. For several weeks now, we've taken some unflinching looks at the ugly face of war. Not only stayed with us, you've responded with some strong comments of your own.

We presented the film The Good Soldier, a firsthand account from combat veterans on what it means to learn to kill. My generation really repressed what the war was about. We forgot that we had been animals for a while. The more of your people that you see that are hurt or kill, the more it intensifies your desire to kill. There's a certain amount of guilt I think you learned to live with. There are things I wish I had not done, but there's no way to change those things. Here's what some of you had to say. I don't know how to contact the men featured in your piece The Good Soldier, but I would like to express the fact that my heart was broken by all of their stories. I wish with all of my heart that they did not have to hurt like this in the name of our My Freedom. Let them know they are being heard. Thank you, isn't enough. Suzanne W. In honor of Veterans Day, I found the episode to be disrespectful to the millions of men and women

who have served in the military, including in combat, and live normal, productive lives. I spent two tours in Vietnam, between 1967 and 1969, and returned to the US afterwards and simply went on with my life. I'm proud of having served, even though I believe war is a terrible thing in which with all my heart, no one ever had to fight in one. We look back at President Lyndon B. Johnson's faithful decision to escalate the war in Vietnam, and we did so with those once-secret phone conversations taped in the White House. There were some striking parallels with our current painful dilemma in Afghanistan. Not a damn human thanks of 50,000 or 100,000 or 100, and 50,000 is going to end that war. What I found fascinating was that Johnson asked all the right questions, got the right answers, and still went ahead knowing there was no reason to fight the war to win. Just once in my lifetime, I would like the President and Congress to do what is right, rather than what they think will win re-election. Dave. Yes, an escalation may very well

be a mistake on Obama's part, but the fact remains, this is now, that was then. Afghanistan is not Vietnam. The differences in the underlying ground realities are profound, while the similarities, I believe, are mostly on the surface. In 1964, the wisdom gained by the experience of Vietnam was not available to Johnson, his general, and his men. It is available to Obama. Michael Drew. By juxtaposing the decisions, then, with now, I can only recall what Albert Einstein once said. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Alvin. And I made my own suggestion for how we can all truly share in the sacrifice of the two wars we're waging in Iraq and Afghanistan. Let's bring back the draft. Yes, bring back the draft. For as long as it takes our politicians and pundits to fix Afghanistan to their satisfaction, let's insist our governing class

show the courage to make this long and dirty war our war or the guts to end it. I have two sons in college that could be affected by your suggestion. Were my sons to face the draft, there would not be a day that I would not call or visit my California congressional delegation and demand an end to our military presence in Afghanistan. Is that what it is going to take again? Despite the danger that your proposal might bring to my family, I commend you for the courage and personal commitment to broadcast it. Steve Kane. I'm a combat vet and I am not convinced a military draft is a good idea. If you think the military is callous now, just wait until they have a guaranteed supply of new recruits. Perhaps there should be a form of compulsory national service, but there should be no exemptions. Everybody goes or nobody does. Anything less would be abused. Guy Cole. What you and so many have forgotten is that having a draft never slowed the U.S. from war. The draft did not stop our ill-advised

quarries into Korea or Vietnam. All the draft does is assure that the poor people who have managed to dodge the military recruiters get caught and sent to be cannon fodder anyway. J. E. McNeil, executive director, center on conscience and war. Keep your comments coming by mail, email or on the blog at pbs.org. Your suggestions and criticisms are an important part of our editor or process. We'll keep reading and listening to what you think. Thank you. We now return to Bill Moyers and Oliver Stone in the studio. Back to your experience. If you were not a filmmaker, Oliver, how do you think you would have coped with what happened to you there? I mean, would you have found another avenue? Would you have flipped out? Would you use the title of one of your own movies become a natural born killer? Seriously. When I came back from Vietnam, I was an angry young man

and had violent thoughts. I went to a period of adjustment. I was very lucky in the sense I went to NYU Film School and I got a chance to make films and that was a release, an artistic expression. And I did three Vietnam movies. So I think over the course of those three movies, I learned a lot more. And I worked out some of my deepest feelings that I didn't even recognize at the time. When you were in Vietnam, were you a natural born killer? No. No. No. Killing came as a result of a process. They were shooting at us. They were shooting men. And as I said, it was a combat situation in the jungle. But I did not... I think I did a good job when I killed because it saved men. It was a tricky situation. I saved some people. And I did my job as a soldier. But I will always remember the man. I saw him up very close. I saw his body after I killed him. He's still there. But he was doing his job. He's still there.

Where? I saw him. I mean, he's there as a spirit in my mind. Now, of course, we open, you know, Americans fire wildly at times. So we fired a lot of rounds. So who knows who, what else we did? You know, we used to clear space in the jungle with machine gun fire and M79s, mortar fire. I mean, we fired a lot of indiscriminate shells. So a lot of casual and collateral damage. I asked the question. Because you can help me clear up a mystery. You wrote this book in 1966. Oliver Stone, a child's night dream. The year before you enlisted in Vietnam. The year before you saw combat. And it's fiction. But there's a chapter in here. Written before you went to Vietnam. That is Erie and Uncanny. It's titled Dear Mom. And I'm wondering, would you care to read this passage? Yeah.

It's a letter I wrote. A fictional letter I wrote to my mother. I had not been in Vietnam yet. I had been in Vietnam as a teacher. And I had also been in the merchant marine in 1965. Wait a minute. You've been in Vietnam as a teacher? Yeah. Before there was a teacher in 1965. What kind of school? I was still on a free Pacific Institute. It was a Catholic school, teaching Chinese students in high school. And I was there for almost a year. And then I did the merchant marine. I was a wiper. That was the lowest job in the ship. It's cleaning out the engine room, blowing the boilers. It's a great experience for me. But I came back to America. I actually went back to Yale a second time and dropped out a second time. Because I was writing this book and I wanted to. I wanted to be a novelist. I admired mailer and Hemingway. And as I said, Joyce and Jack London and above all Joseph Conrad. And I wanted to do something like this. And I wanted to be a novelist. It didn't succeed. The book was rejected. And that's when I went back. I said, the hell with this.

Trying to be different. Trying to be Oliver Stone. I was going to go back to my given birth name of William Oliver. And I went back into the Army and I joined his Bill Stone, William Stone. I wanted to be anonymous. I wanted to be. As I said in platoon. I wanted to be like every other person. I didn't want any special breaks. I wanted to be just infantry. I didn't want to be an officer. I didn't want to be lieutenant. I wanted to be just a PFC and get it from the bottom. And if God at that time, if God wanted to... If God had a meaning for my life, he'd sort it out. Otherwise, I'd be dead. That's my approach in 1967. I killed a man the other day. I suppose it was a great event in my life. Something that since childhood, when with devotion, I watched the violence on the television screen, I have always more or less lived with. Perhaps I expected too much because of and by itself, it was rather commonplace. Like bumping into someone of the subway-turned-style on Lexington and 59th. I shot him out of a tree at 30 yards. I picked him out and fired seven rounds in mad succession until I was assured that he would utterly cease to breathe to move to exist.

Whereupon, as if in pointed irony, I heard the cracking sound of breaking wood. He was tumbling from his nest like an unseen falling coconut. And came to a quiet halt on the firm intersection of two thick branches. A tangle of shrubbery hit all the emotional parts of his body. For a second, it felt deliciously good. I could almost have eaten it. I could almost have eaten it. Whatever this satisfied feeling was, something had fallen exactly into place like a bone comfortably cracking in the body. Good shot, Oliver. Good shot. It seemed so suddenly strange. Without even touching him, I had brought him down like a buck. A light, delightful tickle prevented my wrists, especially my right wrist, you know. The one I broke as a child. Yes, above all, it was the wrists which responded as if they themselves had hurled the bullet knife. A grim satisfaction possessed me.

He was mine. I killed him, me. Nobody else. And this was written here before you went? Yeah. I mean, in some kind of a very weird way, did you go to Vietnam and live this? Well, there's a lot of perverse and weird stuff in that book. It was really a coming to terms with the medical confusions of my mother and my father. And I had fantasies of war when I was young. A lot of them bred by movies and television and books. Hemingway had been a war to find a man. So I was an adventurer. And I wanted, and I was desperately wanted to seek adventure, but I hadn't experienced a war. And that was the last frontier for me. So it became necessary, somewhere when I was doing this book for me. So I have to go back now. This is not good enough. I have to go all the way. So I went back and I enlisted. And Whitehall Street there.

Once you have taken a life. Can you ever look at yourself and other human beings the same way? You have, apparently, children has been on your show. So I think you understand that Buddhism understands this. I mean, if you take a life, it's a tremendous responsibility. But there are times when you have to take a life. And you have to do it quickly and efficiently. And you have to do it because otherwise that more harm can result. So there are justifications for taking lives. In this case, the soldier that I saw that I killed, I may have killed others, I think. But this soldier was in a position where he could have killed several people. Remember what he looked like? Oh, yeah. More or less, did your eyes join? He was dead. No, I threw a grenade in a very difficult situation. It hit the hole he was in. He was in the middle of a group of us, you see. So what was the most dangerous thing was it creates a crossfire. So that would happen often. Let's say we all started to fire at once.

We'd be hurting each other. So we were a very dangerous situation. And he was in a spider hole, actually. He popped up out of nowhere. They were a very remarkable tunnel system. And I got him with one toss, and it was a very dangerous toss, actually, because if I'd overthrown the grenade, it would have landed in our own troops. But I was a good pitcher, I mean, a good baseball player. And I just knew in my body that I would hit this hole at 20, 30 yards. Anyway, I saw it, and yeah, I live with it. I live with it, and I meditate on it. And it's good that I did it because I did my job as a soldier. If I hadn't done it, I wouldn't. And if I had let other people be killed, and I could have done something about it, I think it was the who wants to go to war in the first place. But in a war, that was the most efficient way to do things. Why did you go? Well, as an 19-year-old boy, I went when I was 21, the second time I went to find out what the bottom line was to see how bad lives could be.

This book was a mental approach to how bad life could be. I mean, it was about suicide. I was thinking of suicide, a young suicide. There were a lot of people at that age who think about it. And I was much on my mind. And I had reached a place where I was burned out as a young man, I suppose. And I said, this is it. I have to go back and see the bottom in the platoon. I said, see the bottom of the barrel. And there I found hope, because I was with guys. Pork Ben, Indiana. Places in Kentucky, in Tennessee, that you wouldn't dream of. And these guys were real. They were salt of the earth. And they brought me in. They allowed me in into their group and they would come around me. And I revelled. It brought me back to life. There is a basic human connection. Like water. We flow together. And it was a beautiful experience. I mean, Vietnam was horrible in many ways, but it was also a very beautiful and reaffirming experience

that we can't exist side by side with everybody, with anybody. The band-to-brother sort of thing? Well, I won't go that far, but there was that aspect of... I found the bottom, if you don't want to say it. I'm tumbling out of the ale and I end up in an infantry unit as a nobody. TFC, walking point on my first day. Nobody cares if I live or die. That's kind of like the bottom, you know. Lockin' low! I come from my grandma with my banjo and my knee. And I'm gone too easy on her. My true love, for to see her. Oh... Don't you cry? Do you think President Obama, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, the senior leaders of Congress right now who are lining up on this issue? Do you think they have any understanding of what brunch like you are going to do in Afghanistan?

Do we ever, those people at the top, do they understand what you experienced there? I don't think so. I think you have to go to war, but look what happens. Warriors who become generals tend to be the most hawk-like. So you see, the guys who go in and out like me, they don't listen to us. We disappeared into the landscape. A lot of the Vietnam veterans feel as I do. And especially now that they've seen several wars as they got older. They understand that, you know, a smithy bug or the great marine general said, the war is a racket for corporate America. And he said, I fought. He got two medals of honor, a smithy bugler. He was in China. He was in the Philippines. He was in Haiti, Nicaragua. He said, it was all for nothing. It was all for Bank of America. It was all for the corporations. It was for United Fruit. It's all for corporate interests. War is a racket. It was a bigger racket than Al Capone ever invented.

He said, Al Capone had two counties in Chicago. I was in ten countries. But, Joe, there are soldiers who have actually said to me, based upon some of the progress we've done, you know, warriors. I don't... They won't like this conversation because they will say, I go into the Army knowing what I'm supposed to do. I am a fighter. I don't want to be pitted as a victim. I want to be respected as a fighter. That's what I sign up to do. These are the people who pump their arms in exhilaration when they heard that they were going to Afghanistan. There are soldiers who really do believe it's a call. I say this. I totally agree. And I wanted to be a mercenary in 1965. I wanted to sign up for the Belgian Congo. I was crazy. I mean, I really was hungry. I was 8-17 at that time. So, I had that gene, and I know what it's about. And I think more... If there are those people in society, let's use them constructively. We do need soldiers. We need, I think, the commandos. We need special forces. Well-trained. These are men who will go to any extent to fight. And they fight well. And we do need...

And this terrorist game is not... I don't believe that it's a clean game. I do think there's going to be some illegal operations. And I... I'm not going to... I think we have to wink at them to some degree. You know, that as long as it doesn't get like bagram... The bagram jail in Afghanistan, or where we start really torturing people, I don't believe in torture at all. But I do believe that you eliminate threats. And we have people who can do that, tell to forest seals. I do believe in that. And I think those guys should be there. And we need those guys. We need a strong, but we small and mobile army. You know, I don't... So, you're not saying we have to retreat from the war on terror. We just fight it differently. We fight terrorists everywhere in the world, because terrorists are going to fight us. I mean, terrorists are going to exist for the rest... It's like fighting... I don't believe in the drug war, and I don't believe in stopping immigration. But I don't believe we can stop terrorism completely. But there will be moments in which we can intersect with terrorists who have no... Who mean us harm. And we should eliminate them. Oliver Stone. Thank you very much. Thank you, Bill. For this conversation. The war...

On Tuesday night, President Obama took pains to say Afghanistan is not Vietnam. And, of course, he's right. But war is war, no matter where or when it's fall. Because it's cost or great, and its consequences unpredictable, the men who wrote our constitution were determined to make it hard to go to war, except to defend ourselves and our liberty. Although long abandoned, such constraint deserves more respect than it gets. And in this regard, Afghanistan, along with Iraq, is like Vietnam. Almost unilaterally, with only a fig leaf of congressional approval, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, both Bushes, and now Barack Obama committed us to costly wars far removed from the rationale of self-defense, set forth by those delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787. Our founders knew too well the habits of European kings who went to war at the drop of a royal hat

or for the lust of a royal heart. Matters of life and death they argued should never be so easily decided by one man. In the now quaint, but still elegant language of their day, they understood, and these are the words of James Madison, that in war, the public treasures are to be unlocked, and it is the executive hand which is to dispense them. But that was not a good idea, Madison said, such a mixture of powers would be a temptation too great for any one man, even a good man of good intentions. Madison worried that the strongest passions and most dangerous weaknesses of the human breast, ambition, average vanity, the honorable or venial of a fame, are all in conspiracy against the desire and duty of peace. They were not naive, our founders. The question of war was no theoretical exercise for them. The new republic was threatened on all sides. Its young government had to be able to defend itself and the new chief executive,

not a king, but a president, would need at times to act quickly and decisively. So, the founders debated the question vigorously. Where do we vest the power of war? Charles Pinkney of South Carolina wanted to give it to the Senate alone. Pierce Butler, also of South Carolina, wanted to vest it in the president, quote, who will have all the requisite qualities and will not make war, but when the nation will support it. That idea brought Eldridge Gary of Massachusetts to his feet, shocked. I never expected to hear in a republic a motion to empower the executive alone to declare war. And George Mason of Virginia agreed, I am against giving the power of war to the executive Mason said, because he has not safely to be trusted with it. Or to the Senate, I am for clogging rather than facilitating war. In the end, the delegates compromised as usual with an eye to checks and balances. They gave Congress the powers to declare war legally

but left the president free to repel sudden attacks. The delegate from Connecticut, Oliver Ellsworth, summed up their collective wisdom when he said, it should be more easy to get out of war than into it. How far we've come. That's it for the journal. Go to our website at pbs.org and click on Bill Moria's journal. You'll find there our complete coverage of the war in Afghanistan, and you can access a list of resources for veterans and their families. That's all at pbs.org. Next week on the journal, I'm Bill Moria's and I'll see you next time. You

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