Thirty years ago Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson locked eyes, clenched their jaws and let fly in one of the most magnificent shouting matches in cinema history.
The climax of A Few Good Men has been overquoted to the point of exhaustion, but the self-righteous fury of Nicholson’s Colonel Jessup yelling at Cruise’s Lieutenant Kaffee that he “can’t handle the truth” still burns brightly.
In the final seconds of his career, a cornered, outraged Jessup delivers a withering denunciation of the hypocrisy and cowardice of urban liberals, and perhaps the bourgeoisie in general; a smug elite which cowers behind the ramparts he guards, but turns his honour code into a “punch line” and sees his existence as “grotesque and incomprehensible”.
Certainly, he goes on, he feels no need to explain why he ordered a violent and ultimately fatal assault on a soldier to someone who “rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it”.
Of course, the moment Jessup loses his temper, he loses the case, having abandoned careful evasion in favour of implying that the ends, however brutal, always justify the means.
It’s an exhilarating scene, acted by Nicholson at his peak. But for millions of viewers I suspect it’s also deeply soothing.
Until that point Jessup has been hitting uncomfortably close to home. But when he finally admits he ordered the assault and fully embraces his role as a megalomaniacal villain, we can discount everything he’s just said as nothing more than the roaring of a beast.
For more modern audiences Jessup’s final tirade is even easier to brush aside. Since the drama plays out at Guantánamo Bay, his argument that he is guarding America’s “wall” 800km from the US mainland sounds at best like a defence of colonialism. At worst it conjures memories of CIA rendition flights and torture, things which make Jessup’s honour code less a punch line than a sick joke.
Not that modern audiences need much of an invitation to reject the embodiment of the military-industrial complex and root for Kaffee, who, it is made abundantly clear, is more of a lawyer than a soldier. In the post-Vietnam world soldiers are usually portrayed as baby killers or the traumatised victims of a monstrous, perhaps even evil, system. There is very little room in the middle for the professional military, quietly getting on with patrolling borders or fisheries, or getting supplies into disaster zones and people out of them.
We need a few good men and women, well trained and equipped and backed by money and political will. And if you think that’s 'grotesque and incomprehensible', wait till you see the guys in northern Mozambique.
At the weekend, as I read about Islamic State (IS) quietly hijacking local spaza shops to use as a vast fundraising base for its international operations, I thought of Jessup and some of the truths we can’t handle, or at least don’t want to.
We all know SA’s military is in a desperate state: almost every month some portfolio committee or military analyst reiterates that our army, navy and air force are running on fumes.
But beyond this generalised sense of collapse is a curious silence from the public.
I suppose there are sensible reasons for this. The disintegration of our military doesn’t come into our homes the way the collapse of Eskom or Prasa or the police do.
For millions of poorer South Africans the military is just something that shows up to shout at you during lockdown. Among wealthier citizens ideology no doubt plays a role too. I’m sure many liberals understand the need for bigger budgets and better equipment, but would never express those ideas for fear of looking like blood-soaked warmongers. At the other end of the political spectrum I see a fair number of veterans of the old SADF revelling in Schadenfreude and actively willing the new military to fail.
To be fair, the SANDF doesn’t always help its cause. In February Bantu Holomisa tore into the new head of the SA Air Force, Wiseman Mbambo, after it was revealed he didn’t know how to fly a plane.
Personally I think this was a tad harsh: parliament is full of people who have senior positions despite not knowing how to do anything. Besides, Wikipedia tells me Mbambo earned a diploma in ministry studies from a bible college in Lenasia in 2008, where he would have learnt his primary mission was to turn swords into ploughshares. Given half of the air force is on bricks, I put it to you that he’s doing God’s work after all.
The trouble is, so are the IS fighters drifting south. And what lies before them isn’t Jessup’s wall, but an expanse of dysfunction and corruption, offering sanctuary and good hunting.
I’m fully aware that alarmist predictions about enemies approaching the gates is the primary fundraising tactic of the military-industrial complex. When it’s done convincingly militaries can essentially write their own cheques, as happens in the US, which spends SA’s entire annual military budget about every 36 hours.
But I also know the general silence around our military shouldn’t be mistaken for peace and quiet. We need a few good men and women, well trained and equipped and backed by money and political will. And if you think that’s “grotesque and incomprehensible”, wait till you see the guys in northern Mozambique.
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