Letters From Iwo Jima

Has William Munny forgotten Dirty Harry?

The Dangerous Liberal Impulse to Humanize Our Enemies

An American Master

Clint Eastwood is one of America's finest actors and directors; a master, an American treasure, and a favorite of mine. He has given us some of our best movies, and greatest characters on film, ranging from the High Plains Drifter to Dirty Harry; and directing masterpieces like The Unforgiven, Mystic River, and Million Dollar Baby.

Eastwood's Political Landscape

His gems have ranged the political landscape. He has portrayed iconic conservative characters, like Dirty Harry, but also ranged to portrayals that question the heroism of the manly values we used to cherish, as with his William Munny role in The Unforgiven.

Humanizing the Other Side

Letters From Iwo Jima is Clint Eastwood's companion piece to his masterpiece, Flags of Our Fathers. In Iwo Eastwood tells the story from the perspective of the Japanese, while in Flags he told it from the American point of view. In Letters From Iwo Jima, as in The Unforgiven and other films of his, Eastwood blurs our vision of good guys and bad guys. He does the very liberal thing of sympathetically getting inside the minds of our former enemies.



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I haven't seen the film, so I'm not here to praise nor criticize it. The reviews are mostly glowing. Even the reviews that are not effusive are still gushing with admiration that finally both sides of a WWII story are being told by an American. This includes, according to the reviews, that Eastwood ignores and never shows Japanese atrocities committed in that war, which were legend; but does depict on screen American atrocities, which were rare.

Leftist America-Hating

This makes me a bit uncomfortable. It is too close to the present American leftist myths that America is the bad guy, while all our enemies are good; in fact, according to the left, everyone on the planet are human and deserving of sympathy, except Americans and conservatives. Al-Queda have families too, but American soldiers are war criminals. Castro and Chavez deserve admiration, but Bush merits ridicule and scorn.

Our Enemies Have Families Too

Since I haven't seen the film, I don’t know if Eastwood promotes the myths I discussed above, but it appears that he may, at least on some level. I have no objection to portraying the truth, as you might guess. All of our enemies in all of our wars were human beings, with wives, children, cats and dogs. They all cared about their friends. Some of them were religious. They worried about taxes and mortgages. They honored their parents. Yes, they were human.

Good and Evil

Yet, they weren't saints either. They weren't the good guys while the Americans were the bad guys. There were whole segments of Germans and Japanese who did commit atrocities on a regular basis. Plus, the governments they were fighting for were perpetrating abominations on a daily basis. All this is part of the truth.

Fine, let's always understand that all the peoples on the face of the earth are human. They have their side of the story to tell too.

Yet, there still is good and evil, something the left cannot grasp. Dirty Harry knew this.

There are people on this earth who are scum. They don't have a human side to them.

Probably, most of the Japanese people, even in WWII, were good, honest, decent folks. Yet, some of them were not. Persons like Hitler and his gang, Mussolini, Stalin, and the Japanese leaders who ordered torture and death marches, were not very human. Nor were the followers who enthusiastically carried out their orders.

The same is true now about radical Muslims who behead, bomb babies, and fly airplanes into skyscrapers in the name of Allah and 72 virgins. There is no humanization for characters like this. There are not two sides to the story. America did not deserve this kind of inhumanity.

Perverted Liberal Impulses

I don't care if the terrorist has a wife and children, takes good care of his dog and cat, and sends money to his mother. If he kills in the name of Allah, and hates infidels to the point of wanting to exterminate them, he is an evil man. I don't want to hear his side of the story. I can guess it anyway. He grew up in a home that preached hatred; went to madrasahs that shouted that America is the great Satan; and read books written by the left, by Americans like Noam Chomsky.

The liberal impulse to humanize our enemies in war, demonize our own war efforts, and dehumanize our own leaders is perverted and upside down.

We Need You, Dirty Harry

Still, and again, and always, I don't mind hearing and seeing the truth. Mr. Eastwood's film may portray one essence of the truth in humanizing this group of Japanese soldiers on the island of Iwo Jima, who were stuck fighting what for them they knew was going to be a losing battle; that would end in their own deaths. Nothing can arouse our sympathies, mine included, more than this.

Yet, all I ask is, don't abandon your Dirty Harry entirely, Mr. Eastwood. Good and evil do exist, and there really is black and white in some cases. There truly are scum on the face of this planet, and they do deserve Magnum Force.

It's all right to question your gun slinging from time to time, otherwise you will be Unforgiven; yet there will be moments when you can do great good for your loved ones and the world, and be on the side of the good guys and God, when you look evil in the eye and say, "Go ahead, punk. Make my day."

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Rock

(*Wikipedia is always my source unless indicated.)

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