It’s a documentary shot in Baghdad at a hospital mostly, but footage from patrols is also a part of it. Heart wrenching, void of any director commentary, no manipulated shots or short piece editing done for effect, no soundtrack, nothing is staged, nothing is censored.
The doctors in the documentary, as well as many Pentagon officials, previewed the finished product a couple weeks ago. The guest list for the public premere included almost 100 (from memory of the article) current Pentagon officials. Then an announcement was made, that none of these people would be attending.
A fact that this documentary reveals is that while it’s easy to say ‘war is hell’ and leave it at that, until the vision of what that actually means confronts you face to face, you really don’t know how you feel about it. Also, the sheer randomness of who gets killed or injured and who doesn’t – it’s IED explosions and mortar attacks, skill has little to do with who ends up in this hospital.
To take the next step and put yourself into the shoes of someone you see, hear their story, why they joined, what they said after being told they were ‘going home’. It’s not something universal, to the chagrin of everyone out there who’d like to sum up what ‘the troops’ feel or think in one sentence, but instead just like the lives of every one of us. We’re surrounded by people every day who think differently, do things for different reasons, and express themselves in different ways.
In as much as the Army is government property, perhaps along with that comes the authority to tell the Army what it does or doesn’t feel about the mission. Let’s simplify this by stating that it’s the right of the government to tell the Army that its soldiers are happy and excited to be in Iraq, and because the Army belongs to the government, it must therefore act ‘as if’. So while the actual units that go out and do the work are first and foremost a collection of individual human beings with different brains, backgrounds, tallents and outside motivations for being there, the organization they represent reflects nothing human to the public unless it is programed to do so.
If the programing calls for coffins to be filmed as they arrive back home, that human aspect of the Army is allowed to be expressed. If the programing forbids filming of coffins as they arrive back home, it’s one less thing that can cause someone to connect personally, therefore less of an anchor over time should the war not go exactally as planned. Program the Army to keep the horific details to itself, and for the most part, that’s where everything stays.
Of course, then you have some middle management Pentagon person who authorizes a documentary to be filmed at an ER in Baghdad, and suddenly the Army is there for anyone to see. Politics teach you to divert your eyes and say ‘war is hell’, or to break into a verse of ragtime about how the Army is a thing, a tool, and not each individual wearing the uniform. Baghdad ER forces each person who sees it to leave politics at the door, like a book you can’t put down, it’s an escape, an opportunity for the mind to drop its defenses and actually experience something.
And that’s why Rumsfeld told Pentagon employees that they couldn’t go to the public screening. It’s much too real and unassailable – no Michael Moore spin to apply to it, and therefore it’s to be ignored.
Just like any mistake is to be ignored, this one is no different. If a time machine existed, they’d go back and make sure this documentary was never filmed.
How long before the army kicks the TV crews out?
Apparently, the only reason the Army signed onto this project in the first place was that the filmmakers were to be “embedded”. They hardly left the green zone, except for the patrol and extractions of war wounded. I’m not 100% certain on this but didn’t the Pentagon try to censor certain scenes (like almost all of them) from the film? This film is so powerful, and yet it is presented in such an understated tone. Many images in this piece address the carnage and make such a negative statement about the war where a politician’s campaign stump speech falls short. (that one image where a limb was being thrown in a garbage bag–that was a man’s foot!!) It doesn’t matter what side of the war you are on because, after watching this, you are almost undoubtedly going to come away with a ‘Oh shit, we really got to end this war’ kind of feeling.
Well said! For me the most disturbing part was that mortar attack in the PX parking lot. One of those casualties was in theatre for only a DAY! Imagine that…get into country, head to the PX to stock up on what you forgot to bring, and kaboom…
It’s all mortars and IEDs – – – – these soldiers are being killed by an enemy that’s impossible to track. When the patrol comes upon a car out after curfew, the first thing I thought of was the language barrier, how IMPOSSIBLE it is to police an area when the cops can’t understand what anyone’s saying!
This is just a monumental mistake by our government, going into Iraq…and now, because of politics, most of these people are sitting ducks, their lives having been reduced to a game of russian roulette. Why doesn’t the media focus in on this aspect of the war? Doesn’t get ratings I assume…then again, the conglomerates are making money on the war, and with Republicans having gotten us into it, there’s the fear of biting the hand that feeds.
HBO doesn’t give a shit about all of that, as they’ve got programming worthy of my monthly payment…the red state ‘yeee haw, bomb everything’ crowd can withold their subscription fees, and the network is still able to pay Gandolfini 10 million an episode – plus pony up the dough for a 10 square mile replica of Rome…
ABC, NBC, FOX, CBS…none of them can put on a documentary like this, and in America, LAND OF THE FREE HOME OF THE BRAVE, that’s pretty sad!
Hell, it’s only REALITY!
Still,
I love HBO. It’s my crack, my soma. Believe me, I really want to ‘curb my addiction’ errr cancel my subscription in two weeks, after Sopranos, but alas, Deadwood begins June 11th, Rome returns, who knows when, and Sopranos returns in Jan., Big Love, and on it goes…
“Yeah, because you would have network affiliates in the ‘heartland’, ‘homeland’ that would ban it and replace it with Joan Ryan’s lousy VNRs!”
I meant Karen Ryan!
Adam – I’ll never get rid of HBO. It’s all I watch (not big on TV as a rule)…besides sports, comedy central, HBO…Deadwood is a masterpiece, the Wire is coming back this year as well. Sopranos gets most of the buzz, but these shows are just as good in my opinion, and better in some ways.
There are plenty of people who subscribe to the network TV slate, never watch anything on HBO…different strokes…personally, I’d like to be treated as if I have an attention span, and the ability to follow thick plot threads from season to season…but most importantly, I HATE COMMERCIALS!!!
Hate them!
During the Super Bowl people talk about the commercials and I die a little inside. I don’t care what it is, who’s in them…I have zero interest in being propositioned 60 times during a baseball game.
HBO rules!
I hate the commercials too, even with TiVo! Yet, I did miss them the many times I was deployed overseas, forced to watch AFN and the historic details of Millard Fillmore.
HBO is good for the simple fact of uninterrupted programming. I don’t really watch the movies too much, though.
There is something wrong with a person who doesn’t feel this way. The hard question still is was all the negative stuff worth the positive stuff? I’m not an Iraqi, and comments from Iraqis vary so greatly that it is difficult to really tell.
If Iraq comes out of this (after a couple of election cycles) looking alot like Iran will it be considered “worth it”?
but most importantly, I HATE COMMERCIALS!!!
I have Sirius Satelite Radio and it is great to listen to music commercial free. There are programs that have commercials but they aren’t so anyoying and intrusive.
Howard Stern has commercials so he can run to the head or spritz the throat. Without commercials Howard would need a catheter(sp?)
Yea, the movie selection on HBO is far down on my list of reasons why I pay each month for the channel.
That’ll depend on whether it’s you or I giving our opinion, or the veteran without legs. I’ll say that if Iraq ends up like Iran, that’ll be GREAT! How much longer do we have to stay though? From what I see and read, it doesn’t seem to matter what the US military does, but more what the Iraqi government does. If they can’t come to an agreement, start cracking down on the militias, then to hell with all of them!
This is THEIR problem. The United States can supply cash and materials, but in terms of blood, enough has been shed already.
Got a chance to watch this, just finishing about 10 minutes ago. Rough stuff. Heart wrenching indeed, and chilling.
I just got to thinking about the war a moment ago, with this in mind, and it seems to me that philosophically there’s a way to justify extracting ourselves from Iraq…
IF IT’S AGREED – that freedom and open elections are better than Saddam, if we (Iraqi people and Americans) were somehow convinced that Americans did them a ‘favor’ by ridding them of how it was under Saddam, then we’ve already given them something they should be thankfull for.
What kills that thread of denial though (and it could work, if money is distributed and ‘legitimate’ sources of news, opinions, etc within Iraq), a contingent of low-grade Muslims thirsting for power could begin spouting a lot of that gibberish similar to Ghandi, Dr. King, Jesus, Moses, Mohammad – about how God has blessed us with life and the glory of his…love (cue Peter Centera background track) – get some of these fire and brimstone preacher-types up off the mat, dust them off, put a bulging envelope full of cash into their pocket, arm them and their families with state of the art weaponry…Get the story OUT!!!
Sell, Sell, Sell…
We’re still good at that – – – a lot better than the Indian telemarketer who’ll fly into my web every so often…those poor bastards don’t have a chance in hell.
Screw the Democrats, worry about what the Iraqi’s think! Then start riling up whoever’s living large off of saying the right thing about God and Saddam, yada yada yada – let that spin off into something Iran has to become concerned about over time, pick up stakes, split.
Regional war?
Does it really matter?
Won’t a celebrity getting arrested and put on trial bump that conversation off the map in a week or so?
It can spawn an entire group of frontmen who will take the initiative 30 years later, win a presidential election, get the missle factories back up to peak deliverable volume…23.5 hours/7 days a week…
Sell the ones with minor (or major) defects to everyone else living around the place you’re going to go disrupt, spread the cash around, let a few executives wipe their ass with it, run it like a ‘free cocaine giveaway in the middle of Detroit’…let them get their rocks off, maybe go too far, who cares?
Nobody will remember this in 30 years.
Ah yes, but that is too easy.
The best way to handle Iraq would be the Art Modell model. In the middle of the night get some moving trucks and get out before anyone notices.
Hire a few cute 18 year old girls to dissapear in the Carribean and the media probably would not even notice that everyone left Iraq.
The current Bush method is sort of like the guy in Animal House, saying “remain calm, all is well” while a riot is breaking out. BTW the best movie of all time is either animal house or caddyshack.
I don’t think we are leaving anytime soon. The oil is still there. It’s all about control, not access. Also, if we pull out now or soon, what will happen to the profit margins of all those US entities, which are offering logistic, security, intelligence, etc. support to the 130,000+ troops there? “The fleecing of” the US Army must continue. Despite a massacre here or there, it’s still good business to be in the war business.
Just give our troops 30 days of training on anger management/warrior values issues and another plastic card that they can either wear around their necks or carry in their wallets, and all will be good.
The linking of US energy policy and defense policy has been an abysmal failure, but at this point I doubt anyone is going to recognize that. Like you said war is profitable and who cares about a few grunts.
Question for Chris. If you were going to join the service right now, which branch would you recomend? Specificaly if the person wanted to be trained as a medic.
Why not try the Air Force? The Air Force spends more on quality of life for their personel than any other branch. Have you seen the casuality rates, lately? Mostly, Army and Marines.
Or if you try the Army, go with Spec Ops, same reason as above. At least it appears they give a damn for their soldiers.
Now THIS is a former soldier talking about what he knows!
I agree 100%. For any young man or woman to enlist at this point in time, the Army or Marines should not be on the table if the Air Force is a possibility. Coast Guard is also a choice. I’ve got a good friend who transitioned from Navy to Coast Guard and he’s doing well.
When I joined, the possibility of being killed was in the back of my mind, but in 1995 there wasn’t much going on. If the decision were put before me today, there’s no way in hell I’d volunteer. One has to view their life as something with a beginning and an end to it, and if one is willing to wager that end coming sooner rather than later by volunteering for this war, when it’s certainly not expected of them…a trip to the psychiatrist’s office is a good idea.
trip to the psychiatrist’s office??? That is exactly what my mother recomended.
She’s very wise – – – look, in every situation one faces in life, they’re urged to think of safety and what their actions can do to hurt their future. We tell our kids to buckle up, wear a helmet, no you can’t go hang around at the bridge with that friend of yours who carries around a switchblade…don’t try heroin even ONCE, because you might like it enough to become a junky…here are some pictures of junkys, look at this one without any front teeth, and this one shivering on a park bench in the middle of winter…
If one of our kids was doing hard drugs, we’d get them help. When it comes to military service though, there’s a concrete value that one enlists for the service of us all. That value hasn’t become diminished in a lot of people’s minds, but in mine it deffinitely has.
Why? Well, the war isn’t something anyone HAS to volunteer for. Only after you enlist are you subject to being forced to go to war past your enlistment date.
Not getting yourself into a situation like that…where you could survive two tours, yet be killed on the third one you didn’t even sign up for. The deck is stacked heavily against anyone who steps forward and signs up for the Army.
Getting back to the psychological aspect though, it’s a valid prerequisite to ask a loved one to talk with someone about this, about their motivations, about what they hope and/or expect to get out of it.
Listen to the young man’s answers and ask him where else he envisions he could accomplish what he hopes to accomplish in the Army. Ask him whether he’s contemplated the risk/reward aspect, or if the answer came to him through a period of frustration or longing to ‘get away’.
Are these elements in his life so bad and so influentual that he feels trapped? A lot of us went through those very same emotions before we enlisted, but to disregard what the situation was in 1995-96 (when S.R., adam, HOAT and I all enlisted) compared to now, equals an UNINFORMED decision. These changes in reality and expectations MUST be considered by anyone thinking about enlisting.
Otherwise, the individual is acting out in a way that could manage to cripple their potential just as badly, if not worse, than a nasty smack habbit might.
You wouldn’t advise this young man to open up on the downhill run from Vail to Denver, on a motorcycle not wearing a helmet…you wouldn’t advise him to ‘try some crystal meth and see if it’s for you before making a decision about it’…it all amounts to a situation where the village breaks down as politics and nationalism cause the elders to ignore the cries for help of certain young people when it comes to certain issues.
With the amount of violence and danger in store for him should he enlist in the Army, everyone is responsible for making sure he’s going into it with a clear head, informed, reassured that he doesn’t need to prove anything to anyone, and most importantly, that all of us go through what he’s going through right now, and that it’ll pass over time.
There’s a lot of high paying jobs that require employees to brave such danger – – – if it’s excitment he’s after, steer him towards working on an oil rig, becoming a firefighter or cop…
Or he can end up like that dumb fat hick on Baghdad ER that got a BB of shrapnel flung into the center of his eyeball, and still wanted to back out to the battlefield. Hey dude, you’ve already done enough for your country. Go back home and pop out some kids with some post rat.
It is to bad you cannot spend a day observing in a combat zone. I had been planning on going to nursing school, the pay is good and their are women all over the place, but I spent a couple days at the hospital working with nurses and the job sucks. I have a feeling after a few days in Iraq I might have the same realization.
I have a appointment with a recruiter I will report back what he says.
Have him watch Baghdad ER – then stick an Air Force pamphlet if he’s still adamant about going into the military.
Good luck Karl, and godspeed. Don’t commit to anything until you can get away from that recruiting environment and really think about the offer. I never was given the opportunity to just leave the office (the MEPS inprocessing station), to weigh the consequences of my decision; there was always a sense of urgency in that place. That was my only regret of my whole service: I didn’t demand to take the time to actually think. Talking with a recruiter is one thing, but when you are actually at the MEPS station, doing the physical, doing the testing, and meeting with the military career counselor…well, your world closes in on you fast. They want you to make a decision RIGHT NOW. Then, after you make the decision, you have to go to basic training like next week. You really feel the pressure of the sale. Before the decision I wanted to tell everybody because everyone weighs in. After the decision, I wanted to tell nobody because they could all criticize it. I really didn’t talk with anyone after the decision, for three or four days.
Adam:
Thanks for the advice, I made appointments with an Air force recuruiter and an army recruiter. Something about the navy and the closed quarters on ships is not appealing, the marines seem to much like a high school wrestling team.
If they tell me to bring a toothbrush I will know to run.
Trust not a word the Army recruiter says, but if you do go in – get a job like x-ray technician, something guaranteed rear detatchment-like.
Good luck karl! adam provides some good advice about the pressure they’ll put on you at MEPS