Encouraged by officers not to distinguish civilians from the enemy [View All]

[swag]

From today's review by Stephen Holden of the documentary The Ground Truth in the New York Times.

The Broken Souls of Men Turned Into War Machines

...“The Ground Truth” proceeds swiftly from scenes of recruitment in Venice, Calif., to a Marine Corps boot camp, to the killing fields of Iraq, to the home front. The scenes in which recruits are regaled with promises of the benefits of service, without any mention of killing, aren’t all that surprising. How could a volunteer wartime army be mustered any other way? But there is a difference between misleading advertising and outright lying. One National Guardsman dispatched to Iraq recalls being promised that he would never see combat.

The scenes in boot camp will also surprise no one who has seen “Full Metal Jacket” or “Jarhead,” in which personalities are broken down and reconstructed through systematic humiliation, deprivation and depersonalization.

The movie comes to a boil with its firsthand stories of combat. One soldier after another recalls being encouraged by senior officers not to distinguish between civilians and the enemy. The film’s most gung-ho marine, who went to Iraq for the thrill of combat, recalls his personal turning point: when he killed an Iraqi woman who was approaching his tank only to discover afterward that she was clutching a white flag. Another tells of being screamed at by an Iraqi civilian carrying his brother’s head, which had just been blown off.

But the film’s most disheartening testimony comes from soldiers who returned from Iraq emotionally and mentally shattered only to encounter resistance when seeking treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder. One tells of being dismissed by a counselor with the words, “We don’t treat ‘conscientious objectors,’ ” after he voiced his anguish at having killed innocent civilians. These collected stories portray the Defense Department and the Veterans Administration as understaffed, underfinanced agencies responding with a shocking indifference to the needs of those who have served honorably.
...