Ed Burns, Vietnam vet and co-creator of HBO’s Generation Kill, interviewed in Salon:
How did working on this series affect your perspective on the war?
It didn’t. I still hate it. It just makes it more of a tragedy to know that we sent these guys into combat in the wrong war, on a make-up war. We wasted such talent on a lie. I know from Vietnam, when these guys are injured — guys who are really injured, the guy who steps on a mine or gets hit with an IED [improvised explosive device] — you know, he wants to believe that he gave it for the right cause. And you know, as time wears on, it’ll become more evident, just like it was in Vietnam, that it wasn’t the right cause. Yet that doesn’t bring his foot back or his arms back.
The best trained, best equipped army in the history of the world and you thought it was just your fucking toy to play around with, you incompetent half-wits? That these astonishing people were your little bauble? May you be drowned in the shit of history, post-haste. May your every contribution to this world be denied by all right-thinking people everywhere, forever. Happy fucking fourth of July.
July 7, 2008 at 12:11 am
Watch, “The Wire”, then you’re anger can really foment.
July 7, 2008 at 12:29 am
You know “The Wire” series is the best public policy education tool we’ve ever had, they successfully and correctly let us in on the intricate connections and machinations at work in the cycle of inner city poverty while remaining entertaining. If you want to understand American issues, rent that series. Hopefully Generation Kill will be just as illuminating.
July 7, 2008 at 5:37 am
Gosh, why don’t you liberals support the troops?
/dittohead
July 7, 2008 at 6:00 am
Yeah, The Wire is great. It’s weird that nobody in the blogosphere ever talks about it!
July 7, 2008 at 6:26 am
It’s time for the 0.5 remaining members of The Who to record a new song called Will Constantly Get Fooled Again.
July 7, 2008 at 7:39 am
We Won’t Get Killed Again
July 7, 2008 at 7:40 am
This needs your attention:
http://www.amazon.com/Bold-Fresh-Piece-Humanity/dp/0767928822/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1215441532&sr=1-1
July 7, 2008 at 8:36 am
sifu
as long as there is as consensus that needs protecting, then no one who has been inside it will ever be marginalized by its other members.
essentially that is the story of the american elite power structure of the day. don’t believe me? just see the previous post. jesse fucking helms. scooter libby. richard nixon (eulogized by BILL CLINTON!!!!!). henry kissinger. every one of them should be rotting in a cell in solitary at fuck-you-in-the-ass prison (kissinger should be forced to rape nixon’s corpse while vietnam vets and cambodian civilians with one leg look on chanting “he hated you because you were a jew”) but no, in “polite society” none of that gets you the boot. and it never will until we have our own year zero.
July 7, 2008 at 8:53 am
Why hate these warmongering assholes for what they did to wound 18,000 American soldiers? Isn’t it enough to hate these warmongering assholes for what they did to wound and displace and otherwise blight the lives of many tens of thousands of Iraqi Arabs?
July 7, 2008 at 9:20 am
Year zero? Sounds like violent revolution. Very ungood in just about every actual and conceivable situation. And very, very unlikely around these parts, as well.
I couldn’t agree more on the deserved fate of the group of assholes listed, and many more like them besides, but if “it never will until we have our own year zero” is true (and I believe you are mostly right that it is) then some corollary to “better 100 guilty go free than 1 innocent be harmed” applies, IMHO. More’s the pity.
July 7, 2008 at 10:47 am
What is the point of having this magnificent army if you are not going to use it?
July 7, 2008 at 11:33 am
And Burns was the “quiet”, ex-cop, co-creator of The Wire. Simon was the balls out political one.
I’m sure the flying monkeys in the GOP, if they catch wind of this, will honor him for his service and welcome his trenchant viewpoint.
July 7, 2008 at 11:46 am
I found this part of the interview disconcerting. Maybe the next time Jim Webb’s in L.A. he and Burns could sit down for a friendly chat:
Tell it to the Marines, Ed. Specifically, to the Marine who sponsored the bill — the one whose Marine son will deploy to Iraq for the second time next year.
Ed Burns sounds a shade too comfortable with a permanent warrior underclass.
July 7, 2008 at 12:43 pm
DFH: I agree that it sounds like violent revolution, and that it’s very unlikely around these parts. but the 100 guilty vs 1 innocent thing only makes sense if the guilty are somehow prevented from continuing to do harm. while it’d be nice to avoid harming the innocent (and an argument could be made for “innocence” being a fabrication anyhow), the guilty continue to send the innocent into harm’s way to kill more innocents. i think that, though unlikely, armed insurrection is the only way.
July 7, 2008 at 2:41 pm
The Wire, my all time favorite show, opened a lot of eyes to the gritty realities of the drug war. Whenever one Wirehead meets another, there’s this shared look of recognition, like you’re both in on some Holy secret. I’m hoping this series follows in its foot steps.
July 7, 2008 at 2:46 pm
[…] heard, the creators of The Wire have a new series on HBO called Generation Kill. Even the press surrounding it gets intense. I’m hoping, on a qualitative front, the show can hold a candle […]
July 7, 2008 at 7:00 pm
>>Ed Burns sounds a shade too comfortable with a permanent warrior underclass.
That part jumped out at me too, but Jesus, really? Ed Burns doesn’t pass the good guy test? I hate the term “narcissism of small differences,” but since I haven’t bothered to come up with a better one, I guess I’ll accuse you of that.
I think he’s wrong insofar as any twentysomething guy who gets back from a war intact should go to college simply for the target-rich dating environment, but look, education’s not for everyone. I wasted a lot of money and not quite four years figuring that out. Not that I didn’t take anything valuable away from the experience, but I wouldn’t have if I’d started out at these guys’ age.
As you can tell from the above sentence construction, in spite of my academic failings, I’m quite the autodidact.
July 7, 2008 at 7:24 pm
Meant to say, the free ride’s tranferable anyway, so I’m not sure why I made a whole big thing out of it since I’m not, like, ashamed to be a laborer and always on the lookout for a perceived slight. Or anything.
July 8, 2008 at 9:15 am
OT but today is the day, message from The Dodd, doooodz:
This is it.
Today the Senate will be debating FISA and retroactive immunity.
By tomorrow, it’s likely that voting will be done.
And what we do together over the next 24 hours will determine what the legislation looks like.
I’ve offered an amendment to strip retroactive immunity from the FISA legislation.
On Monday you joined thousands of Americans online by calling your Senators (with the help of our friends at FireDogLake) and asking them to vote “NO” on any bill containing retroactive immunity.
There’s still time for more calls to be made.
http://tools.advomatic.com/7/fisa
I promise you that your voices are being heard in the halls of the Senate.
I promise you that I will continue to fight alongside you until the last vote is counted.
Help me now to ensure that my next email to you will be a celebration of our commitment to the rule of law.
Thanks once again,
Chris Dodd
July 8, 2008 at 9:24 am
Burns also co-wrote “Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets of Baltimore” and “The Corner” with Simon. The guy was a cop, hung out with the the Balmer Murder POlise for more than a year. Simon and Burns hung out with dope dealers and addicts for a year to write “The Corner.” I’ll buy what he says about the vets. His whole pitch is to totally integrate himself into the culture, which is not far off from that he grew up in, without going native. He learns the names and histories of the characters. That’s what gave the wire its sting.
July 8, 2008 at 10:08 am
Re: MSNBC Chris Matthews: “Can Obama now win over the regular folks, white folks…?”
To: hardball@msnbc.com, phil.griffin@nbc.com, steve.capus@nbc.com, letters@msnbc.com
********
Dear Chris Matthews,
I believe you owe your viewers an explanation as exactly what you meant by equating ‘white folks’ with ‘regular folks’.
Would you care to enlighten us? With particular attention to explaining exactly what makes non-white folks so non-regular?
Yours truly,
Name
City
July 9, 2008 at 1:18 pm
@Gil Mann: Where did I fail Ed Burns on the ‘good guy’ test? I’m making a criticism — which is equivalent to failing him on the ‘all-knowing and perfect’ test. And the criticism focuses on something that jumped out at you, too, so lighten up.
What Burns says is true of a lot of the men and women in the military, but far from all — and it’s a genuine problem for this country if and when it becomes an across-the-board truth.
Further, Burns’ ignorance about the G.I. bill and its author compounds his sweeping characterizaton about the guys serving. One of Webb’s main motivations in pushing the bill is to restore the military as a way up; of all the members of Congress, he’s the most in touch with who “these guys” are.