I had thought that at one point that there was a movie being made (Bruce Willis as the protagonist) based on a 4ID battalion’s experience up in northern Iraq (Mosul AO)? Don’t know but agree entirely with the sentiment your post exhibits. Also would contend that media and the 90201folks have also passed by the opportunity to portray the sacrifice of many very brave Iraqi’s soldiers and those of their families. The dudes I worked with were incredibly brave; sacrificed much; achieved a lot; and continue to soldier on. It was an honor to have served with them US & IA.
Steve: you make a good point. I’m suprised that the story of the Iraqi hasn’t been to either.
You all will have to finish this conversation without me. I’m leaving very early tomorrow for my race on Sunday and I don’t know if I’ll have internet.
There HAS been coverage of heroic acts, successful battles and humanitarian projects, if you look for it. The only mention I could find in the New York Times of the Marsh Arabs through a google search was from 2003. I didn’t see any mention of the U.S. helping them though.
Note: Google is not the be-all and end-all. From the NYTimes of 3/8/2005:
But when Mr. Hussein’s government fell in April 2003, villagers went to the dike and gouged holes in it using shovels, their bare hands and at least one piece of heavy equipment, a floating backhoe. Since then, something miraculous has occurred: reeds and cattails have sprouted up again; fish, snails and shrimp have returned to the waters; egrets and storks perch on the jagged remains of the walls, coolly surveying the territory as if they had never left.
As Mr. Hashim walked down a short muddy embankment to his boat, the air filled with a cacophony of frogs croaking in full-throated appeal to their potential mates. The re-emergence of life from the bleak Iraqi desert, said Ali Messen, another marsh Arab, from the town of Chabaysh, has made him feel ‘‘like a person detained in prison who is set free.’’
In certain places, and with a fraction of their former bounty, the marshes have started to come back from the dead.
Now, financed by an array of American, Canadian, British, Italian and Iraqi agencies, teams of scientists are trying to determine how fast and how fully this region can return to what was. The work includes soil and water sampling, computer modeling of water flows, training of local scientists and restocking some of the marshes with indigenous fish. One program also comes with veterinary and health services for the marsh Arabs.
All I’m saying is that, 5 years into the war, we as a nation refuse to embrace our heroes. Not guys like me who followed convoys around fixing broken trucks. But Soldiers like the ones I mentioned a couple of posts ago. Not a single movie. Not even a made-for-tv movie.
Movies about war typically don’t come out until a certain amount of time has passed after the war has finished. Correct me if I’m wrong, but one of the big issues of Apacolypse Now was that it was made shortly after we pulled out of Vietnam.
I can’t speak for th erest of the country, but I can give my perspective where I live. Most people I know are unhappy with the war, unhappy with the way the administration handled the war, unhappy with the chicken hawk attitude that a lot of warmongers have, unhappy with the few bad acts we have heard of soliders doing (Abu-Graib), unhappy with the blood shed our soldiers have to endure, and unhappy with how all of this affects our position in the world.
You can disagree with the specifics, but the overall general feeling is a negative one toward the war. However, with only one exception (a true liberal friend from liberal boulder Colorado), every single person I know has the greatest respect for what the soldiers on the ground are doing in Iraq, most of us have family and/or friends who are over there, and they all understand that most of the country is fairly safe and that the death toll is far less than what it was for most other wars.
I just want to make that distinction because the reporting that I see done on the war just hasn’t lead us to the same conclusions that the right wing pundits claim that it has lead us to. I’m not defending bad one sided reporting. I just want to make the point that the “liberal media” IS balanced out by the “right wing noise machine.”
Don’t you understand that it is the all-powerful liberal media that is responsible for all those naive U.S. citizens who want to actually consider withdrawing from Iraq a mere 5 years into the mission? Its the one-sided media that paints those horrible pictures: Don’t you understand? … Of course the liberal media is also responsible for losing Vietnam, too, remember. Why had it not been for the press, the VC would have had their ass handed to them before 1970 and SE Asia would be 20 years ahead of where they are now.
Sarcasm aside, you are right about the prevelance of negative war movies and timing … I mean the first two big ones, just a couple years after Vietnam, were Apocolypse Now and the Deer Hunter. Both great movies, but no much in the way of heroes in them … At least during the Cold War we had Iron Eagle, Red Dawn and Top Gun! And Rambo. (Well, the first Rambo movie was actually kind of anti-war).