Sherry Chandler » Don’t send a hero to Iraq
Don’t send a hero to Iraq
Some things I’ve happened on in the last several days that seem in some way connected.
This broadcast of Fresh Air in which Linda Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz talk about their book The Three Trillion Dollar War. Bilmes and Stiglitz talk about all the human and dollar costs of the war in Iraq, some obvious, some hidden. They talk about the way our veterans have to fight the system in order to get the care they need. They talk about the way the powers that be consider care for veterans a diversion of funds that could otherwise be used to beef up our war machine.
Whatever one thinks about Obama generally, this notion that opposing the Iraq war back when it was the most awesome war ever wasn’t a big deal really pisses me off. It was a big deal, and I’m tired of the few courageous people such as Bob Graham who did oppose it getting written out of the script. Those were crazy days, and the “crazies” who stepped way out on that limb to yell “stop” deserve our praise and admiration for it.
The entire anti-war movement hasn’t just been marginalized, it’s been largely erased from our political narrative. It existed. It marched. It gave speeches. And some even cast their votes in Congress.
In the Valley of Elah, a film in which a father (Hank Deerfield) tries to find out who killed his G.I. son (Mike), recently returned from a tour of duty in Iraq. What he discovers about his son’s brutal murder is no more disturbing than what he sees in the e-mailed photos and the murky, corrupted cell phone videos in which his son recorded his in-country experiences. A. O Scott, in the NYTimes, describes the film like this:
Much as Hank wants to know what happened to Mike the night he died, his real quest is to find out who his son was, and what happened to him in Iraq.
The only clues he has are some JPEGs his son e-mailed to him, the memory of a desperate late-night phone call from the war zone and some smeary, scrambled video recovered from Mike’s cellphone. These hectic, unfocused clips stand in jarring, pointed contrast to the neatly composed frames and carefully paced shots that make up most of Mr. Haggis’s film, and they pose an agonizing challenge: How do you extract meaning from such chaos?
I have no desire to critique this film, other than to say that in the long line of craggy, flawed, ineluctable lawmen that Tommy Lee Jones has made me love in spite of myself, Hank Deerfield is the one who touches my heart deepest. Scott’s review can speak for me. “Almost no violence takes place on screen,” he says, “but there are times when ‘In the Valley of Elah’ feels almost like a horror film.”
I would delete the “almost.” It is a horror film, and one our soldiers live daily.
“Don’t send a hero to Iraq,” exclaims one young soldier from Mike’s squad.
For so many reasons.
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