|
|
15
It's doubtful whether there's a psychiatrist's couch big enough to take the number of American troops psychologically damaged by Iraq.
The mental toll is hardly surprising given they are probably the most emotionally ill-prepared force to engage let alone police a shattered country still little more than a war zone.
A grim recurring symptom of Uncle Sam's inability to cope with peace (rather than wage war) is the amount of atrocities committed on Iraqi soil.
On November 19 2005 a unit of US marines - incensed by a fatal boody-trap attack on their armoured column - cold-bloodedly gunned down 15 Iraqi civilians in Haditha.
British director Nick Broomfield - acclaimed for his idiosyncratic docs on subjects ranging from serial killer Aileen Wurnos to Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss - has recreated those terrible events in a straightforwardly ungilded style.
Drawing a largely inexperienced cast from the ranks of US army Gulf War veterans as well as Iraqi combatants, he pieces together the events of that fatal day.
What emerges is an occupying force who are not necessarily bad people but profoundly incapable of dealing with a situation teetering on the brink of anarchy.
Conversely, Iraqis - embittered by the ill-advised disbandment of their standing army and the breakdown of any semblance of law and order - are particularly vulnerable to the murderous blandishments of al-Qaeda.
The result is an impossibly vicious circle with marines reacting to guerrilla attacks like hysterical children while unscrupulous Islamic sheikhs hold up US atrocities as examples of "the Great Satan" at work.
Like Brian De Palma's similarly-themed Redacted, this offers no answers but does hold up a mirror to both sides whilst shining a relentless light on what you don't see on the TV news.
It's depressing stuff - who in their right mind wants to watch gung-ho grunts toss grenades into a room-full of children or witness a bomber getting the thumbs up from a sleazy cleric?
Yet without film-makers like Broomfield adopting a rigorous, even-handed approach to the situation we'd be none the wiser.
Essential viewing.
Tim Evans
|
|
