#i feel like i'm stating the obvious but 20% voted for bj last time i checked so maybe not lol

[marley-manson]

i’ve never actually sat down and laid out why hawkeye was 100% right in preventative medicine apparently, i just went thru my season 7 tag and i just take it as read that we all agree he’s obviously right. so now i wanna do that.

So, despite how the ending is framed, Hawkeye isn’t trying to end the war by taking one colonel out of commission. What he’s specifically trying to prevent is this particular colonel defying orders and making a reckless, pointless attempt to capture a hill that would undoubtedly, as Lacey readily admits, get many men unnecessarily killed. As Hawkeye says, “You heard him. He’s gonna take those kids up that hill tomorrow and send them back to us in pieces.”

In taking out his appendix, he also causes Lacey to be taken off the front lines, and prevents even more reckless decisions down the road, at least for a while, which is effectively a bonus. He succeeded in his aim of preventing the deaths of many soldiers.

BJ thinks this is pointless because Hawkeye didn’t end all suffering in the world, apparently lol. “You treated a symptom. The disease goes merrily on.” BJ’s line of thinking assumes that all soldiers are interchangeable and saving one life doesn’t matter if another dies somewhere else.

All the specifics of their argument in the scrub-up room don’t really matter next to the main point there, but it’s also worth noting that BJ’s other objections are, “Cutting into a healthy body is mutilation,” “Some things are wrong and they’re always wrong,” and the guy who’ll replace the colonel might be worse. These are all bullshit objections. Hawkeye’s response to the mutilation accusation is kind of beside the point (plenty of doctors do unnecessary surgeries on people for money) when the real argument is “so what? better a mutilated colonel than a hundred dead soldiers” but he’s still technically right about that too lol, cutting into a healthy body isn’t always “mutilation.”

Hawkeye’s response to BJ saying it’s always wrong is “There are gonna be a hundred boys still alive tomorrow. Go tell them how wrong it is,” which is the perfect response to that kind of moral absolutism, no notes. And his response to the replacement colonel point is “So I’ll take them one at a time,” which is also the correct response. You can’t predict the future - if the next guy’s worse, Hawkeye will deal with the next situation that comes up in front of him in the best way he can. All you can do is focus on what practical steps you can take to mitigate harm here and now, and that’s what Hawkeye does. Plus considering Lacey is the battalion commander with the highest casualty rate of all, the odds are pretty good that the next guy won’t be worse.

The fact that the narrative backs BJ up by ending on Hawkeye’s guilt and BJ’s statement that the war continues (plus I’ve seen the writer directly state that Hawkeye’s action was pointless, somehow) is baffling to me lol, even ignoring the (forgotten by the writers) fact that Hawkeye and Trapper did the same thing to Flagg in season 2 and had a great time. Hawkeye accomplished his stated goal and saved a bunch of lives, and based on Hawkeye’s sound argument, the episode seems to understand that, until the end.