Oswald in the doorway: the blog of the Oswald Innocence Campaign, by Ralph Cinque

Linda and I watched a Danish movie last night called Brothers.

In it, a Danish soldier leaves his family to go off to fight in Afghanistan. He's in a helicopter that gets shot down, and he is the only survivor. He gets captured by the Taliban and is brought to a place where another Dane is being held, a young man who is a radar technician. They didn't know each other, but they quickly become friends because of their shared plight.  

Michael, the lead character, has a beautiful wife at home, who is like the quintessential Scandinavian beauty. He also has two lovely young daughters.  The other man is younger, but he is also married and has a newborn baby boy.  

The Taliban decide that the radar technician is worthless to them, so they order Michael to kill him- to bludgeon him to death with a lead pipe. At first, he refuses. But then, they make it clear that they will kill him, Michael, if he doesn't. Michael takes some deep breaths, grunts fiercely a few times, and then picks up the lead pipe and starts beating his friend to death.     

Fortunately, they don't show you the blows landing, but there are a lot of them, and by the time it stops, you know the guy is dead. 

Things move swiftly from there. British commandos storm the place and kill and capture the Taliban, and Michael gets rescued. His family, who had been told that he was dead, is shocked but elated with his return. Just think: they had already held his funeral.

But, his return quickly turns into a nightmare for everybody. He's not the same man. He's cold; he's cruel, and to everybody, including his wife and kids. He's insanely paranoid. He gets violent and destructive. And when police show up when he's on a rampage, he taunts them to kill him. And you know he means it. 

But, they don't kill him. They arrest him, and he winds up in prison. The movie ends with his wife visiting him in prison. She makes it clear to him that she knows that something happened- something terrible happened in Afghanistan- and he has to tell her what it is, or else, she is leaving him, and he will never see her again. 

So, breaking down, crying, distraught as any man can be, he starts telling her what he did. 

The movie ends there, and I have to say it was very well acted and well directed. But, I can't say I think much of the writing. Speaking for myself- and umpteen billions of men the world over- I wouldn't kill a friend just to save my life. No way. Let them kill me. I wouldn't care. Dying isn't the worst thing in the world. Living with a memory like that would be much worse than dying. You'd have nothing to live for after that. Absolutely nothing. And I would have known that at the time. 

So, I would have told them no- with absolute certain resolve, and then I would have let them put a bullet in my head. Isn't that what you would do? 

And that brings us to the JFK assassination. What they did to Kennedy was tantamount to beating him to death with a lead pipe. It was no less brutal. From what I know of LBJ, from having read Phillip Nelson's book about him, he was capable of that. LBJ was an absolute monster. 

But, what about the others who were involved? What about George HW Bush? He was a family man. He knew that JFK had a young family- a beautiful wife and two adorable children. How could he be any part of such a monstrous thing?

I think the answer lies in the military. George HW Bush was a military man. He was a war hero. How many Japanese did he kill? And I am not saying that critically. But, when you kill in war, you don't think about the families of your enemies.  

For many of those who were involved in the JFK assassination, Kennedy was perceived as a traitor to this country. They viewed him as a traitor over his concessions to the Soviet Union in trying to end the Cold War, over his refusal to invade Cuba during the Bay of Pigs fiasco, over his unwillingness to escalate the war in Vietnam, and more. To Cold Warriors, that warranted a death sentence. And that's why they could do what they did to him without guilt. That's why they didn't fall apart afterwards the way Michael did in the movie.  

It also helped a lot that so many people were involved. They found strength in numbers, as people often do. But, in the movie, Michael committed his monstrous act alone. 

But, one thing I'll never figure out is how they justified killing Oswald. He had a young family too. And there were no grounds to consider him a traitor to his country. There was no Cold War basis to condemn him to death. How did they live with themselves afterwards? 

Again, for some, like LBJ, he was just a monster- to the core. A bloodless, soulless, heartless monster. But for others, I don't know how they could live with it. I honestly don't know.