Judgement Defeats Us?
In the 1979 Vietnam War movie Apocalypse Now, Colonel Kurtz went rogue and then used barbaric methods to defeat the enemy. The U.S. military turned a blind eye because Kurtz was successful. Then Kurtz leaked photographs of his atrocities to the international media. The “civilized world” couldn’t stomach what they saw and wanted Kurtz stopped.
The U.S. military declared Kurtz insane and dispatched an assassin to kill him. When Kurtz and the assassin were finally face-to-face, Kurtz told the assassin he had the right to kill him, but he had no right to judge him or call him a murderer. Then Kurtz delivered a monologue that many still find reprehensible.
Kurtz said: It’s impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. I remember when I was in special forces, and we went into a camp to inoculate the children for polio. Later, this old man came running after us, crying. We went back to the camp. The enemy had arrived and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were, in a pile — a pile of little arms. I remembered crying. I wept like a grandmother.
I didn’t know what I wanted to do.
Then I realized the enemy’s will to do that made them stronger than us. They weren’t monsters. These were trained men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, and who were filled…