|  As a marine recruit, I didn’t watch T.V. or read the newspapers. All the information I needed I got from the corps. At seventeen-years-old, the marine corps was my mother, father and all my sisters
and brothers put together. The corps fed and clothed me, provided me
with a home and brother marines I trusted. No way could I look objectively
at a geo-political situation like Vietnam. I believed it my duty to secure
the blessings of freedom for millions of South Vietnamese threatened by northern
Communists. It was a privilege to be an American fighting man in the
war against global totalitarianism.
Now, I look back and shake my head
at that naïve kid. Now, nobody
could feed me that same propaganda. Of course, now I understand a soldier
needs propaganda to believe he’s doing the right thing, and his cause
is just. He needs the portrait of righteousness painted for him, and
he needs to believe it. Fortunately for governments, soldiers almost
always want to believe. They want to believe the small unit tactics they
learned will keep them out of an enemy ambush. They want to believe every
time they fire their weapon, something will fall down dead. If any part
of that is false, then all the rest could be false as well, and a soldier refuses
to believe that.
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