Dog Days of Occupation of Iraq

September 12, 2008 8:06 AM

Endgame in Iraq- 9/11 release of Sean Smith's latest video. This one, finished this summer, is of candid interviews with soldiers in the 101st Airborne in Baghdad.

Painful to watch.

"I believe it's time to go home ... I'm done fighting ... tired of it."

posted by Surfurrus (7 comments total)

In the 'out of the mouths of babes' department, I submit the most reasonable plan for resolution I've heard uttered by one of the soldiers: 'Take down all the barricades and build a big skate park.'

Indeed.
posted by sfts2 at 9:01 AM on September 12, 2008

I wonder if Charlie skates?
posted by YouRebelScum at 9:08 AM on September 12, 2008

Probably quite a contrast to the 101st's recollections in Band of Brothers.
posted by jon_kill at 9:25 AM on September 12, 2008

This is excellent. It's too easy to fall into condemnation on either side, at the soldiers enacting wrath borne of a nation which resolves its ideological issues (and consolidates its leaders' wealth) through violence, or at the resistance fighters arbitrarily targeting both soldiers and civilians to counter an occupying force. But in the end we have pieces like this to illustrate that in the face of such horror as modern war, with traumas and problems that are both complicated and long term, our best course is first to listen to the people directly involved.

'Take down all the barricades and build one big skate park'
perfectly captures how in many a fortified bunker are a few humans hoping for something better.
posted by sarcasman at 10:05 AM on September 12, 2008

Also don't miss Sebastian Junger's latest piece in Vanity Fair about soldiers in Afghanistan: Return to the Valley of Death. With the Pentagon requesting $20 billion more for Afghanistan, and American casualties mounting there, the author rejoins the men of Battle Company at their Korengal Valley outpost. The war has changed them; have they changed the war?

Some of the video was shown on Nightline: Company B in Afghanistan
posted by homunculus at 11:55 AM on September 12, 2008

Why don't they support the troops?
posted by John of Michigan at 7:34 PM on September 12, 2008

It makes me want to cry. It upsets me to see our soldiers breaking into these people's houses and blind folding them. They have no idea if they are going to git mo or something.

But I understand why the soldiers would be angry, they watch their loved ones die repeatedly. They know the war is wrong, but they are angry about the unnecessary death.

The human tragedy is incomprehensible.

Here are two other things about the military I found interesting:

PBS documentary "Carrier"

A really great special I saw about what contributed to 9/11
posted by metricfan at 12:13 AM on September 13, 2008