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- [00:00]
A
Hey everybody. Welcome back to Bulwark Takes. I am Sonny Bunch. I'm culture editor at the Bulwark. I'm very pleased to be joined today by Mark Hertling because we are going to be talking about a subject that's near and dear to my heart. War movies. But a subject that Mark has a lot of experience with, obviously a lot of. I'm not even. I'm not going to. Everybody knows your CV here, so I'm not going to waste their time and bore them with that. But I'm really excited to talk about this because a. I wanted to pick your brain on this topic for a while. This is, this is going to be a fun episode for me, but also because I feel like there are some lessons here that we can learn in, in the culture more broadly. But also, you know, maybe, maybe the folks in the White House, if they stumble across this video, if it shows up in their YouTube algorithm, they could, they could take away a few things too. We'll see. I don't know. Mark, thanks for talking to me today.
- [00:45]
B
Hey, this is great, Sonny, and thanks for opening it up with culture. I'll. I'll insert one thing that was you just brought up. You know, in the military they tell us that we have to learn leadership through a, through a three legged stool. The one leg is what you learn in the schoolhouse. The next leg is what you learn through experiences in your operational assignment. And the third leg is what you learn from self study. And I consider watching war movies and reading books a self study. I kind of put together a list and we'll see what you think about it.
- [01:14]
A
I refuse to judge your list. I won't do it. But I am excited to see it. So we've got a top 10. Technically it's a top 12. And I will. Maybe we could discuss, you know, titling conventions here, you know, new numbering conventions here with these ties. But that's okay, that's 12 is 12 is good. So starting. We're going to start at 10 and work, work our way down to one. Number 10 on your list because you always start at the 10 you go down to. The one is Gettysburg. Gettysburg, which is a classic Civil War film.
- [01:42]
B
It is. Ted Turner did this film, you know, wanted to give an homage to the battle of Gettysburg. It has a great historical fiction based on the book by Michael Shara, Killer Angels. And it's an excellent portrayal of the effects of personalities in war. How dynamic personalities interact, how they can cause great friction, or how they can either win a battle or lose a battle. Depending on which side you're on. So it's really has some great lessons about how personalities interact, even though it's based on a historical fiction by Michael Shara.
- [02:18]
A
Let's get more specific here. So when, when we're talking about the personalities that helped win or lose a war, what, what's something in the film that folks should focus on if they're watching it? Say, like, oh, this is a good example of how Lee kind of collapsed on the battlefield.
- [02:34]
B
Well, the Gettysburg campaign was an invasion of the North. Lee persuaded Jefferson Davis that he could do it and it would take the war to the north and cause them a great deal of pain. And part of that was due to cognitive dissonance. He really thought the will of his army could overcome the material of the Union army and put them in disfavor, while at the same time taking resources away from the North. The food, the cattle, the horses, the cannons that he was going to abscond with when he went into Pennsylvania. So on the other side, you had a brand new commander, a guy who had replaced the former general of the Union army, a guy named Mead. And he was just starting to get his act together. The resources were good on the north, much greater than they were in the south, but the personalities were coming together. There was some personality disconnects, some toxic leaders, some communication problems on both sides. But because of Lee being as adamant as he was and, and changing what he was doing constantly in the battle on the campaign plan, it caused disaster for the south and it started, you know, the road to ruin for the Southern armies.
- [03:48]
A
Next up, tied for ninth, you've got Patton and A Bridge Too Far. Patton is one of my favorite war films written by Francis Ford Coppola. Of course. It stars George C. Scott as General Patton himself. Why do you have this one on the list?
- [04:04]
B
Well, the two of them talk about campaign planning, which is what something the military does. You know, the military doesn't determine strategy. They take the strategy and then turn it into operational and tactical plans. So in both of these movies, there's some interesting dynamics. In Patton, the lesson is all about the presence and influence of a commanding general and, and how he was overcome to a degree and sometimes during a career that caused great problems by his super sized ego. You know, Patton had the ego the size of the state of Texas, and sometimes that got him in trouble. He was always too demanding. He didn't quite understand his troops, although he's seen as a guy that was a terrific commander. But if you look deeper into Patton's History, not just these battles in North Africa and Europe, but going back to the time when he was a colonel and a lieutenant Colonel, Patton was not a very nice guy. I mean, he led the attack on the bonus marchers in Lafayette park and on the Mall in D.C. in the 1930s and just basically beat the guys. His cavalry unit, the 3rd Cavalry Regiment, beat the guys on the National Mall who were just there trying to get pay from their service in World War I. So anybody that watches the movie Patton has to go beyond that personality to understand who Patton truly was. The movie that was tied for ninth, in my view, was a terrific movie called A Bridge Too Far. And it was all about Operation Market Garden. Also in World War II, Montgomery's plan to go north and see some of the bridges and ports in the Low Countries and of Holland. There was an over optimism on planning. The campaign plan was extremely optimistic. It didn't mitigate the risk in terms of getting people to different locations. And because of that there was strategic failure. So, you know, this movie talks about tactical sacrifices of units versus questionable strategic outcomes. So you can have a great army doing wonderful things under great tactical and operational leadership, but if the strategic plan is not nailed down and if you haven't kind of mitigated the risk, you're placing a whole lot of burden on those who serve for an end state that doesn't come about.
- [06:37]
A
Yeah, A Bridge Too Far is an interesting one. So this comes out in 1977. It's written by William Goldman, who of course wrote Marathon man, you know, the Princess Bridal. He's written a number of classic movies, et cetera, et cetera. But it's interesting. Again, comes out in 1977. So it's, it's a few years after Vietnam. There's this kind of downer sense. It definitely, it definitely hits this mood of like, maybe we can't do everything. Maybe, maybe we actually can't do everything we want to do out there. Which is, which is unusual for a big war movie like this. They usually have slightly, slightly happier outcomes.
- [07:18]
B
You put your finger on something really interesting because it was, it did come out right after the Vietnam, after we ended the war in Vietnam. It also pointed to sometimes you don't listen to the senior generals, sometimes the politicians should question them. And in this case it was Churchill and Eisenhower who really allowed this operation to take place. And, and it was flawed primarily because they wanted to assuage Montgomery and his plan for going into the Low Countries. So again, the leadership aspect of this is fascinating in a very complex Environment that requires a lot of the, both the airborne and the tank troops that were trying to seize these bridges and get up to where the ports were.
- [08:06]
A
Number eight on your list is Restrepo, which is a documentary about the war in Afghanistan. This came out in, I believe, 2010. It was CO directed by Sebastian Younger, who's an American journalist with a British photojournalist by the name of Tim Heather Heatherington. Why is Restrepo on the list and what, what should we take away from it?
- [08:28]
B
It was a war of my generation and I knew a lot of people that were fighting there. So in watching Restrepo in 2010, I was anticipating that it was not going to be realistic. In fact, it was exceedingly realistic from just the raw humanity of what the soldiers do, the trust they build within their small unit teams, small unit adaptation to a mission that's really tough in a very difficult, complex environment, peer leadership, the ability of young soldiers to step up at the tactical realm and also their ability to share hardship in really tough conditions. But in this particular movie, they showed the soldiers of this unit having constant contact. They were always in combat, they were always in battle. There was clear mastery of the tactics by this unit, but again, there was an unclear strategic purpose. So if you talk about the heroism of young soldiers and, and military personnel doing their job, Restrepo is a perfect example. But then you also get to the point of so what if the strategy is bad? If they've put it been put in a context where it's very difficult for their tactical actions to control the battlefield, then you're going to have failure. And in fact, that's what happened at the end state of the movie. Because while the trust at the squad level is the foundation for tough fights, those squad level personnel depend on the higher ups to make sure that they're doing the right thing.
- [10:12]
A
We're going to have another war on terror error film here in one second, the next one as a matter of fact. But I'm just curious what your take on what your take of. Generally speaking, the films that have come out of these conflicts have been like. Have the films been true, true to life, accurate, or what have they been lacking?
- [10:32]
B
I'd say a percentage of the ones that have come out of Iraq and Afghanistan have been true to life. They've represented the soldiers well. They've done a very good job of showing capabilities and the leadership at the small unit level as being excellent, much like I would say of most of the movies about Vietnam. But it also paints the picture that you can win every battle. But if you don't have a strategic vision and a strategic objective from the political side and the grand strategy from the senior officers within a military, you're going to have problems and you're not going to win a war. And that's one of the things that I think was most interesting about Restreco. And it was also, like you said, Sebastian Junger was the one that put this together based on his writings and he saw the dedication and the sacrifice of, of the young soldiers. And yet he still questioned the overall objective of the war in Afghanistan after certain time frames were passed and what the senior generals were saying about what they could and could not do.
- [11:43]
A
So let's go to the next entry on your list here, which is Zero Dark 30 at number seven. Now zero dark Thirty is a little bit unusual compared to some of the other films in this list because technically about a CIA agent and the, the efforts of the intelligence apparatus here. But it highlights something very key about the role intelligence assimilation plays for the modern military. Right?
- [12:11]
B
Yeah, and that's why I picked it, Sonny. This, this particular movie is one of my favorites. It's not truly a war movie, if you put it that way, but it's actually a film that really shows how the US military today uses intel based operation to conduct their campaigns and their battles. And in this case it's the story of Maya who has a CIA agent who has just relentless focus on driving the objective of finding Bin Laden. And you know, she makes a lot of mistakes. The CIA makes a lot of mistakes. They're learning about the culture of Afghanistan, the culture of Al Qaeda as they were fighting them. But you know, the biggest thing I see in this is how long it took them to collect the intelligence for this one critically important target that so many operations were basing their action on. And it really gets to the point of how institutional endurance, sometime in combat, and sometimes not even tactical success will bring completion to an operation. So this, this is my homage to the intel community, having seen them in combat and used them in combat so many times in Iraq, understanding how much they play a part in the kind of daily operations we do anytime we send men and women to war.
- [13:45]
A
It's a fascinating movie. It's one of my favorite films. Just Generally speaking of the 2010s, I think Director Catherine Bigel and screenwriter Mark Ball do a great job of depicting a long drawn out conflict that is kind of open ended. And it was actually, it's funny, they, when they started shooting the movie, the script ended before, before Osama bin Laden was killed in that, in the raid. Because they, they. That's just. They. The script was done. They started shooting it. He hadn't been, he hadn't been killed yet. So they, they ended up having to kind of reshoot the end afterward, which, that, that. It, it. It's something to think about because that is a very different movie. If it ends without the, the, the objective being accomplished, it. It comes almost a little more nihilistic.
- [14:36]
B
Yeah. You know, and the other thing that I think was interesting in this, because I know some of the people that were portrayed in this movie, especially Admiral Bill McRaven as the head of the Special Operations Command as he retired, but he was relentless, as was Stan McChrystal in terms of finding ways to get after the terrorist cells, especially bin Laden. The thing that I found interesting and what I experienced in combat was the extremely close relationship between the intelligence agencies and the military forces. You know, when I was in Iraq, both Stan McChrystal and Bill McRaven were there as the JSOC commanders, and we worked very closely together in Multinational Division north in the northern part of Iraq during the surge, where they would put together the intelligence that they would fuse from captured prisoners, from things on the street, from reflections through satellites and overhead imagery, through signals intelligence. And they use the intelligence agencies as well as their own military intelligence, the dia, and also intel troops on the ground to really drive to the point where they were breaking up networks and cells. And that's something we haven't seen in previous wars. There's always been an intelligence community and a military community, but I think both Bill McRaven and Stan McChrystal fuse those together in this very unique kind of conflict.
- [16:10]
A
We're going to go to an earlier conflict now with Courage Under Fire coming in at number six on your list. Courage Under Fire, directed by Ed Zwick, who is kind of known for making really good, high quality message movies, which kind of ties into what we're. We're talking about here. When you're, when you're watching Courage Under Fire, what is your takeaway of the. The difficulties that come with, for lack of a better word, friendly fire? You know, things that happen, accidental deaths of your own men by your own hand in a conflict.
- [16:50]
B
And, Sonny, that's why I chose this movie. This one haunts me, to be honest.