News & Politics - Gunner Palace (War in Iraq Documentary; March 4th)

UnsilentMajorty · 01-29-2005, 10:27 AM

I know we have a movie board, but I think this is very relevant to this board and may be even moreso in some respects:

There is a new documentary coming out entitled "Gunner Palace".

http://www.apple.com/trailers/indepe...er_palace.html

It is an ubiased look at what is really going on in Iraq since we invaded. It is almost the live action version of the book "Generation Kill" in some respects.

----

The main reason I decided to post this on this board is that even the trailer brings up something that I think some of you who are pro-war need to acknowledge whether you want to or not.

One of the young soldiers says that he is proud to be a combat vereran at 19. He says it with an almost gleeful smile on his face.

Whenever I see kids like this, I just want pull him/her aside and tell them that what they're really looking for is wanting to be part of something bigger than themself and the military/war just happens to be it at the current time and that there are far better things do do with your life and be a part of than a senseless war that is going to benefit no one except wealthy corporations and the elite.

Also, I don't disrespect a soldier's right or willingness to serve. My father was a soldier (now a retired officer), my many cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents were also soldiers who have seen front line combat (and not just cushy desk jobs).

However, that doesn't mean I excuse, or approve of this administration "bainwashing" young kids like in the trailer into believing what they are doing is "just" or "right". That young soldier (and others like him) may think this is "cool" to be part of something like a war right now...

But when he is 40 and still has nightmares about what he saw/did over there... If he even survives to be 20... Then he'll be the first one to admit that the price he paid for being "cool", or "belonging" wasn't worth it and hopefully won't wish it on anyone else who doesn't want to serve either.

Hindsight. Experience. Wisdom.

That's basically what I think some of you who are pro-war need to take into account right now. I know it is hard when you are in your 20s and you think you will live forever -- because you've been told that by the media and various other influences like college -- And this is why I brought this up.

Flame away.

SuperDeluxe · 01-29-2005, 07:02 PM

This is so obviouslly bait..that I'm not going to bite

How's that for a flame.

mh67511 · 01-29-2005, 10:45 PM

Looks like an interesting movie. I'm really starting to enjoy documentaries.

UnsilentMajorty · 01-30-2005, 12:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SuperDeluxe

This is so obviouslly bait..that I'm not going to bite

How's that for a flame.

It may be so-called flaim bait to you... But the movie and the point I am trying to get across is valid even if you disagree with it and are trying to make me look like a fool and like you are smarter than me (and a lot of people here).

Also, lest I remind you that in the past you posted a lot of inflamatory things on this board just to watch people get upset... Like some kind of game... So I wouldn't be talking about flame bait, pal.

TokyoNiGHTS · 01-30-2005, 12:13 AM

The part with the soldier was talking about their budget was what stuck out to me. If anyone had any doubts about the troops not being properly armored that's all they should need to see.

I think there are alot of people like that 19 year old. Alot of younger people see war as something cool and not dangerous. I think that's one of the dangers of allowing people so young into war, they really don't understand what the real consequences are.

UnsilentMajorty · 01-30-2005, 01:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TokyoNiGHTS

The part with the soldier was talking about their budget was what stuck out to me. If anyone had any doubts about the troops not being properly armored that's all they should need to see.

I think there are alot of people like that 19 year old. Alot of younger people see war as something cool and not dangerous. I think that's one of the dangers of allowing people so young into war, they really don't understand what the real consequences are.

Well, realistically, it is a double edged sword.

Who would you rather send into a war?

Someone who can actually question the movites for going to war in the first place? Or someone who(m) is impressionalbe and has the vitality of youth to get the job done?

It sounds like I am contradicting myself in that I am acknowledging that you need the "right" people for combat duty... Which is true.

BUT what I have a problem with is that this administration is literally brainwashing some of these kids (via their parents and other influences) to where they are making war a kind of rite-of-passage since everything else seems not as grand as it used to be for some reason.

I mean, if you're 19, full of piss and vinegar... What sounds more "manly" to you?

Getting your driver's licence (that you already have)? Or strapping on an M16 and going to "Defend Freedom"?

I know some of you don't want to hear this, but if you want to belong to something, look at what you can belong to HERE, at home, FIRST and what good you can do that won't cost you your life in the process.

A real easy example is that some of these kids want to go and make Iraq and other countries "better" places to live for the people who live there. Improve the quality of life. Well, they should first start by looking at what they can do in their own backyard and how they could help people, here, instead.

These kids think Iraq is bad? Why don't they go to the more poor parts of their town/cities and try and help THOSE people (here) instead?

Granted, I realize a lot of these kids who go into the military are poor themselves... But again, as of right now, it is still an option and all volunteer force and I just believe that some of these kids are being coherced and or misled into joining for the wrong reasons and it is costing them their lives.

This is what I meant about wisdom, experience and hindsight.

You can't "teach" these things and they just have to be learned... But unfortunately, and why I am harping on this issue, is that for some, the only way they are going to learn that lesson (that war is bad; not something like it is portrayed in movies and TV) is to die and right now, this is a very real and unfortuntae situation we (as a country) have gotten ourselves into.

TokyoNiGHTS · 01-30-2005, 01:13 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by UnsilentMajorty

Well, realistically, it is a double edged sword.

Who would you rather send into a war?

Someone who can actually question the movites for going to war in the first place? Or someone who(m) is impressionalbe and has the vitality of youth to get the job done?

I think people that atleast know what they're doing and what they're getting into by going to war are the ones that should be there. The kid in the video who seems to be all happy and thinks its fun wouldn't be one that should go. He doesn't really seem to understand what he's doing. That's not only dangerous for the Iraqi people but for our own military.

To me, war isn't something you should be happy you're having to do. Sure it could possibly cause so good changes in the places you're fighting in, but you're still having to kill people, some innocent some not. That's not something you should be happy about. I'm not saying that teens shouldn't be sent, just make sure they actually know what they're getting into.

ceilirose · 01-30-2005, 04:46 AM

This is a pretty positive review of the documentary from European Stars & Stripes of all places.

Quote:

New film highlights 1st AD's Iraq mission

By Terry Boyd, Stars and Stripes
European edition, Tuesday, December 14, 2004

Tucker spent a total of two months between September 2003 and April 2004 living with the unit at what soldiers call “Odai’s Love Shack,” a partially bombed-out palace on the Euphrates River where Saddam Hussein’s son, Odai, brought paramours for trysts.

The regiment set up headquarters at the palace complex, which they nicknamed “Gunnerland,” while patrolling Al-Adhamiya, one of the most volatile sections of Baghdad. Tucker accompanied soldiers on countless missions and simply hung out with the troops. He said that left him with a sympathetic view of his soldiers that strongly runs counter to an image colored by soldiers’ abuses of Iraqi captives at Abu Ghraib prison.

“I tended to give soldiers the benefit of the doubt,” he said. “They didn’t ‘sandbag’ detainees (place sandbags over their heads). It shocked me you didn’t see rougher treatment of detainees” given the constant threat level.”

He did see, over time, mounting frustration among troops over the language barrier, and the fatigue of working nearly around the clock.

“It’s a bunch of 20-year-old kids who just want to survive,” he said.

Gunnerland was a world between the reality of raids and attacks and the “real” world via the Internet, phones and the media, Tucker said. There were the funny moments, when soldiers would pull up to find suspects conveniently waiting to be caught, and darker moments when the U.S. troops rammed Humvees into houses, only to find out they had the wrong targets, he said.

Tucker said his goal is to show Americans — without being voyeuristic, political or patronizing — a world that he finds inspiring and terrifying.

He quotes one of the men he calls “soldier/poets:”

“It’s like (Spc.) Richmond Shaw said – ‘For y’all this is just a show, but we live in this movie.’”

Tucker and his partner, Petra Epperlein, have shown “Gunner Palace” at the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado and the Toronto Film Festival in Canada to enthusiastic reviews.

It is, said Tucker, art out of pain.

It was painful getting to know and respect soldiers and officers such as Sgt. Maj. Eric F. Cooke and 1st Lt. Ben Colgan before they died in separate attacks, he said.

After that, he said, he couldn’t make “something rah-rah.” But neither could he make a film disrespectful of soldiers. Tucker said: “I most like that it shows them being them.”

Tucker succeeded in keeping the film “apolitical,” said Jon Powers, 26, a former 2-3 Field Artillery captain, now a schoolteacher in Buffalo, N.Y.

“It’s a great movie … for soldiers to see, and … for their families and friends to see if they want to understand what we went through for 14 months,” said Powers, who saw “Gunner Palace” at the Toronto Film Festival in September.

The film is, he said, an accurate depiction of daily life made by a filmmaker given extraordinary access by Lt. Col. Bill Rabena, the battalion commander. Attempts by Stars and Stripes to reach Rabena were unsuccessful.

“People always ask me if there was censorship; if I had trouble getting access and all those issues,” Tucker said.

Instead, he said, he had unrestricted access to soldiers in their off hours, to all missions and even to interrogations of suspected Iraqi insurgents. “They embraced your being there,” Tucker said. “People just want their story told.”

Whether the regiment’s soldiers will be able to go to the local base theater to watch themselves on the big screen remains unclear. Army and Air Force Exchange Service executives say that’s unlikely, unless a major distributor with whom AAFES has a contractural relationship picks up the film, and it goes into wide release, said Judd Anstey, media branch manager at AAFES headquarters in Dallas.

Viewers should be prepared for what Powers calls “some down-and-dirty” footage, including a scene where soldiers are “playing guitars and basically hanging out,” a peaceful moment interrupted by a mortar attack. “But once (the audience) gets over the shock, it will get a conversation started. … The guys who went with me to see it said, ‘Is that what it was really like?!’ … I said, ‘Yeah.’”

http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?...5&archive=true

No1important · 01-30-2005, 05:28 AM

This documentry looks interesting. Why do they still call it a war anyhow? It is an occupation not a war.

WalkingOnSunshine · 01-30-2005, 09:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by No1important

This documentry looks interesting. Why do they still call it a war anyhow? It is an occupation not a war.

It is not an occupatoin it is/was a liberation.

- annuscka - · 01-30-2005, 10:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by WalkingOnSunshine

It is not an occupatoin it is/was a liberation.

I'm no military expert, but when you say "liberation" I think more about epople opening doors to prisons and torture chambers or the Black Civil Rights movement [no violence being the key] - than bombing a country and then taking over control of their government/what was left of it. When a country goes into another country and overthrows the leader NO MATTER WHAT the reasons or who he/she was it is an occupation. The US, USSR and the other "winners" of WW II [no one can win a war] - occupied Germany too. That became a success, or at least something like it, but then it was a world war as well and a genocide in the making.

As long as your troops are in another country, you are occupying it. No one except the UN has troops outside their own borders for peaceful reasons.

ceilirose · 01-30-2005, 10:35 AM

Someone needs to tell Bush that it wasn't an occupation. During the last year he's said the following:

Quote:

Bush: "On June 30th, the Coalition Provisional Authority will cease to exist and will not be replaced. The occupation will end and Iraqis will govern their own affairs." [5/24/04]

Bush: "I say it all — I say it all the time publicly. Yes, I wouldn't want to be occupied." [5/28/04]

Bush: "I've told the Iraqi people this, and I mean it; we will transfer sovereignty to the Iraqi people on June the 30th. Of course, I know I'm — American citizens hear, well, maybe the Iraqis don't want us to occupy them. Who wants to be occupied? Nobody wants to be occupied." [5/7/04]

Bush: "And they were happy — they're not happy they're occupied. I wouldn't be happy if I were occupied either. They do want us there to help with security." [4/13/04]

I distinctly remember watching him on TV and hearing him say the second quote.

- annuscka - · 01-30-2005, 10:55 AM

Lovely. Thought June was over and done with, wonder why they're still there then...

Quote:

Someone needs to tell Bush that it wasn't an occupation.

I'd be glad to do it, but...

In Fair Verona · 01-30-2005, 12:07 PM

The documentary sounds very interesting, and I'm glad it's not slanted in either direction. The fact that it focuses on the soldiers more so than the war is a good thing, and it's intriguing to know what a soldier thinks and goes through in Iraq.

I know a lot of people my age who want to join the military after they graduate and go to war. The media does portray it in a very adventurous heroic light (all of those Marine/Army/Navy/Air-Force ads), though I don't necessarily blame them. They want all the troops they can get, and it's a great ploy to get them. I would rather have people who seriously know what they are getting themselves into over there, but then the thought of Bush sending people like that into Iraq makes me think that we'd be in an even bigger mess because nothing may get done. People like that are more likely to have seconds thoughts and hesitations. Like said above, the nineteen year old who is enthused about his job will be happy to get it done.

Peanut · 01-31-2005, 01:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by UnsilentMajorty

You can't "teach" these things and they just have to be learned... But unfortunately, and why I am harping on this issue, is that for some, the only way they are going to learn that lesson (that war is bad; not something like it is portrayed in movies and TV) is to die and right now, this is a very real and unfortuntae situation we (as a country) have gotten ourselves into.

Who is this WE you speak of? Have you ever served in the armed forces for your country? I have and I can tell you right now I was proud to do so and I don't regret doing it. Today's youth are just a bunch of pampered babies that just whine too damn much. Grow up, the world is and has always been a harsh place. The only thing that's changed is the media's access to it.


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