You won't regret spending 8 minutes to watch this UK Guardian/BBC film --

[DeepModem Mom]

An award-winning photographer, Sean Smith, embedded with the 101st Army Division in Iraq made this film -- with a background of country music -- to tell the story of U.S. soldiers and their Iraqi counterparts.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/video/page/0,,1927660,00.html

[Tigermoose]

1. K & R

kick

[turbo_satan]

2. The film is as depressing as it is well done...

This film is the most compelling visual evidence I've yet seen of the well-documented caustic relationship between US forces and regional Iraqi powers. I realize that US forces are operating in a difficult environment, but you can see from the footage that the mission -- at least in the region filmed -- is doomed. In particular, pay attention to the scene where the twenty-something American soldiers are rounding up the village leaders, tribal elders, and local authorities, and SCREAMING at them and berating them as if they're disobedient children. Whatever the reasons for the deteriorating situation, the approach as documented certainly seems doomed to failure.

[DeepModem Mom]

4. I agree with all you've said. nt

[Ezlivin]

3. K & R

N/T

[ClayZ]

5. anoter K & R

[BelgianMadCow]

6. I did not - it clearly shows the "they stand up so we can stand down" K&R

does not work, and neither does the hearts and minds game.

This "war" is unwinnable. And this was not filmed in a hornet's nest.

[DeepModem Mom]

7. Kick for the night shift.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

8. The U.S. sends young, naive, inexperienced military personnel

who may have never left their native state before and who were brought up on "We're Number One" and sends them to lord it over the people of an ancient, proud, and thoroughly alien culture.

What's so bad about that? :sarcasm:

Imagine the opposite situation: America occupied by young, naive, inexperienced Iraqi military personnel who had never left their native province and who had been brought up to regard Americans as uncultured infidels.