Buzz Kill
Kevin Sites
In war, there is always time for champagne. In victory one deserves it, in defeat one needs it.
-- Napoleon Bonaparte
From wine swilling Greek hoplites to tweaked out NAZI’s on speed, drugs and alcohol have been the most essential psychological weapons in the history of human warfare, both lowering our resistance to killing and helping us to forget it in the aftermath. But what does our dependence on drugs in wartime say about us? Are we reluctant killers, good at our core, who need to be altered to do the job … or willing, but imperfect killers, constantly seeking the things that will help us do it best?
The blockbuster film Dunkirk by Director Patrick Nolan recreated one of military history’s greatest oxymoron; the successful retreat. Yet it failed to answer the more pressing question of how those hundreds of thousands of allied soldiers got surrounded on that beach in the first place? Just as well. The answer would’ve hijacked the uplifting theme of “Dunkirk spirit†heroism with a bleak and sordid, narcocorrido.
http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/buzz-kill
