As a quick aside, there is a Senate candidate in Nebraska who will rise in prominence pretty soon and has my admiration: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/368081/obamacares-cornhusker-nemesis-john-j-millerhttp://www.nationalreview.com/article/368081/obamacares-cornhusker-nemesis-john-j-miller.
He is a charitable intellectual in the mold of Paul Ryan, and I had the pleasure of organizing an election party in McLean at which he was a guest. His is a phenomenal story of rags-to-riches sort of success. He is a generalist, showing a vast aptitude for politics, philosophy, law, economics, and theology. It also doesn't hurt that he's firmly entrenched within my preferred theological circles:
http://www.amazon.com/Here-Stand-Confessing-Evangelicals-Reformation/dp/0875526705/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1389641371&sr=1-5&keywords=here+we+stand
That aside now aside, I gathered most of my deploying soldiers into our small little movie room to watch Lone Survivor tonight. It is the true story of a team of four Navy Seals who went out on one of their special missions, only to have everything foiled by a couple of goat herders. It involves one of the most consequential moral decisions made in this war--whether to let the civilians, likely with Taliban connections--loose, and thus expose their position and risk their lives.
You'll have to watch the movie to see the decisions they made and their consequences, but in doing so, you will likely see the best war movie of the current generation of warfare. The hype from other soldiers had already reached the ears of my own, and even with the hype, not a one of them--from the colonel to the specialist--came away disappointed.
When it looked like the movie was over, I heard soldiers muttering about how good it was. Then the concluding screen gave way to pictures of some of the lost soldiers holding their children, and video of one of them dancing with his bride at his wedding. Every soldier with me sat back down and didn't make a noise. Afterward, one of my enlisted soldiers said that if he was at a theater in the States, and people tried to get up during that portion, he would tell them to show some respect and sit back down.
Soldiers are particularly sensitive about the families and families of those lost. These families are the uncounted cost of war. You can see it in the pictures of love shown at the end that are now but memories.
I asked a group of my soldiers about the movie at midnight chow. I asked them whether they thought the movie oversold or undersold what soldiers have to go through. Most of these soldiers have deployed multiple times to Iraq and/or Afghanistan. They thought it was dead on. It was realistic in that it was a bit gruesome, but not toned down nor over-dramatized.
I asked them whether they thought the movie demonized soldiers (like, say, Full Metal Jacket does at times) or deifies them (like, say, Glory). Again, the soldiers thought it struck the right balance. The soldiers in the movie were forced to make tough decisions, for better or worse, were shot up and hurt but resilient, made jokes and indicated their affection for another, with a few sweet words said about their families throughout.
My hope for a movie like this is that it continues to enjoy popularity throughout the country--that people would see flesh and blood soldiers fighting for each other and for flesh and blood families, that they would know that the fight is still going on, and that it's not the military's fight, but America's fight.
But the best recommendations, from our fighting men and women, have already come in. The names that are tattooed on many of their arms or hearts have been honored by this film. For that, they are thankful.
