From the Salmon

The work in Iraq is difficult and it is dangerous. Like most Americans, I see the images of violence and bloodshed. Every picture is horrifying, and the suffering is real.

Amid all this violence, I know Americans ask the question: Is the sacrifice worth it?

President George W. Bush
Speech at Fort Bragg, NC - June 28, 2005

Tonight, while the president spoke to troops at Fort Bragg, I watched Michael Tucker’s documentary Gunner Palace, a look at the experiences of the 2-3 FA Battalion in Baghdad. While the president talked about how we see the violence and understand the sacrifice, Tucker’s film began with these words:

Most of us don’t see this on the news any more. We have reality TV instead — “Joe Millionaire,” “Survivor.” Well, survive this — a year in Baghdad without changing the channel.

I’ve never received military training or experienced combat, so it’s hard for me to say whether this is a realistic portrayal of what life is like as a soldier. But I think a strength of Tucker’s film is that, regardless of whether or not you supported the decision to invade Iraq, you will find plenty to reinforce and subtly challenge your view of the war. And Tucker largely leaves you to make your own conclusions.

What his film does well is allow the soldiers to tell their own stories. And for that reason alone, this is a movie that should be seen by every American. And we really need more movies or media stories that do the same. Soldiers’ stories need to be told, with as little varnish or political framing as possible.

Gunner Palace shows American soldiers reaching out to the community in which they’re stationed — visiting orphanages, trying to calm down a heated community meeting, playing “truant officers.” The camera follows the soldiers on raids, as they bring in suspected bombmakers, attackers, and financiers. And it gives you a seat inside the military vehicles as they patrol the streets of Baghdad.

It was this last view that had the greatest impression on me. I got a profound sense of just how vulnerable these soldiers are and just how difficult it is to discern threats, whether human or IED. As part of the most powerful military force ever assembled, they have been trained to fight and win wars. Yet it’s hard to watch them trying to function as policemen and social workers. And it’s hard to watch with the knowledge of how many soldiers have lost their lives as relatively easy targets on simple patrols like this.

As our military technology advances to let us kill with precision from huge distances by pressing a button, as our medical technology allows us to limit battlefield casualties, and as we entertain ourselves with blockbuster war movies and military video games, the decision to go to war becomes less and less weighty.

President Bush seems to think that seeing the few images of violence and bloodshed that make it to our easily-distracted news channels gives us the information we need to understand the realities and consequences of war.

But I’m not sure that’s true.

When the media are not allowed to show images of flag-draped caskets or military funerals, I’m not sure we’re getting a full picture. Without movies like Gunner Palace, I don’t see how we could begin to understand what it’s like to be asked to fight a war in the middle of thousands of innocent civilians. And we certainly don’t understand what it’s like to live as an Iraqi with foreign troops patrolling your streets and knocking down doors in your neighborhood in the dead of the night.

Look, all wars have consequences, many of them unintended. The more we as a country understand these consequences, the less likely we are to approve going to war unless it is absolutely clear that war is the only option. We owe it to ourselves and particularly to the men and women in our armed forces to understand those consequences as clearly as possible.

And so we need to listen to their stories.

As Gunner Palace drew to a close, one of the soldiers was asked “Do people at home understand what is going on here?” He answered:

When you sit on your couch and you watch the TV, and you go to your 9 to 5 job and you complain about the pizza being late, there’s no way you’re gonna know how we live here. Someone being sympathetic to this — I don’t even know if I’d be sympathetic if I wasn’t in the army.

After you watch this, you’re gonna go get your popcorn out of the microwave and talk about what I say. And you’ll forget me by the end of this. You’ll forget all of this. Only people who will remember this is us.

I think it’s important that we prove him wrong.