You might have heard of this guy.  Goes by the name “Jon Voight.” He just did an interview with Radar Magazine and had some interesting things to say.

An excerpt:

You recently visited with wounded troops at Walter Reed. What were your impressions?

I was deeply impressed by them. Most I spoke to were young people, around 20 years old. And they were really very eloquent, very positive, very respectful. You have to be proud of the children we’re turning out from looking at this group of people. For me, I would much rather hear from these guys than the people who are presenting the news on television on a daily basis.

Were you able to gauge the mood among the troops—have they lost a sense of mission?

These guys say, well, it’s possible to win it. And I’ll tell you one thing they said that was very remarkable: the increase in troops that has been recommended by the president, they say anybody who’s over there knows the value of backup and we should be behind this. When you’re out in that situation in danger, you want to know you’ve got backup. Only one guy said he wasn’t going back to Iraq, and he had been wounded a couple times. But all the other guys wanted to go back. One young woman, a very attractive young woman, had her leg amputated. But she says she’s going to find a way to get back into it. She just reupped and she said they would find something for her to do.

Do you think it’s possible to win the Iraq War?

Here’s what I think: this is a real war, extended beyond the borders of Iraq.

As in the more general war on terror?

The war on terror is real. People would have you believe it’s not real. This is not Vietnam. This particular situation is not the same wherein we can walk away and just leave destruction behind us. No, we can’t. Anyone who has paid attention to what [Iranian President] Ahmadinejad is saying, what all the mullahs are saying in this country and in England, and in all of the Arab world, this is serious—they’re calling for the destruction of America and all democracy and that’s what’s going on. We could lose this war.

Here’s Voight on partisan attacks on the President:

While you might not hear people say, “I don’t support the troops”, the country and the media on the whole are increasingly caustic and critical of the president and Iraq. Does that bother you?

It’s a tidal wave going in this direction. It’s sad for me. The attack on George Bush I find to be reprehensible. From the beginning it was politically motivated, and it’s been very successful, the disrespect for our president and for our country and for our government. I have a great regard for our government. We have all sorts of checks and balances that are afforded to us by our constitution. We have a lot of wonderful hardworking people in the government. Once it gets to be partisan, it takes the energy in another direction. There was a big movement to impeach Lincoln during the Civil War, but it is not healthy at this time when we are fighting a very vicious enemy that has made it very clear in their attacks on American embassies and the Twin Towers, and on our forces what they intend.

On Bush’s “lies” about WMD’s in Iraq:

My view of it is this: they say our president lied to us. Well, he didn’t lie to us, everybody else had the information he had.

And after Voight sticks it to the media for being agenda-driven, the reporter twit follows up with this question:

But there’s still a role for journalism in democracy, right?

Voight fires right back:

Of course. You bet. There’s a place for good actors in movies too. But you can do damage to a decent movie by going off in the wrong direction too. My brother Chip [Taylor] wrote a song—he wrote “Wild Thing” and he wrote it at 2:00 in the morning—one of the lyrics was very telling: “The trouble with humans is they’re only human / The trouble with trouble is it’s always around.” That’s the deal. We have to fight against gravity to stand up. We should help each other. And the truth is very important. Journalism can be helpful too, but once it bends to sensationalism and commercialism and becomes agenda-driven, it’s not so good.

Spot on.

Read the whole interview.  There’s not a dull moment in it.

One wonders how someone like Voight can so honestly, so eloquently get it when it comes to Iraq and the war on terror while the rest of the entertainment industry just seems totally out to lunch on the subject.