WILF FOR PRESIDENT!!!

My colleauge and I went to see the new documentary Gunner Palace this evening. It was an excellent movie, though it drives home to a great extant one central point: WE HAVE NO IDEA WHAT WE ARE DOING IN IRAQ!

The film is the work of documentary filmmaker Michael Tucker. He was embedded with the 2/3 Field Artillery, U.S. Army, in Baghdad for several months in 2003 and early 2004. His filml is basically apolitical. He simPly follows around a group of young men (and a few women) on duty in some of the roughest parts of Baghdad. (Some of the soldiers were featured on the cover of Time's 2003 cover for "People of the Year: The American Soldier.") Basically the young men and women he follows around are average Americans, mostly young kids just out of high school. They are doing their best to get by in Iraq and survive long enough until their tours are up and they can go home.

These young soldiers seem much more grounded and realistic about the mission in Iraq than almost every partisan hack back here in the States. One the one hand, they are the ones on the front line, trying to improve life for the average Iraqi, knowing that they have rid the country of a brutal dictator and have opened up at least a faint possibility for a better life. On the other hand, they also just want to survive long enough for their twelve months to be up so they can go home, and they don't really care what they have to do to make sure they survive.

Though he is subtle about it, I think the director is definitely trying to get a message across, and it came through loud and clear to me. As he shows the constant dangers that these troops go through in their day to day lives, periodically in the background he will play a recording of Rumsfeld or some other commentator saying how we are turning a corner and how grateful the Iraqis are towards our soldiers. It is clear that the soldiers and the Iraqis know this is pure, unadulterated bullshit.

The most appealing character in the film is Sp. Stuart Wilf. He is 19 years old and a complete joker. We enjoy it when he is on film. At the same time, we also see how many more days it is until Wilf gets to leave Baghdad. Wilf, more than Bush or Rumsfeld or anyone else, knows what the mission is. Get home alive with all his limbs. Keep in mind also that this film was made entirely before the spring of 2004, when Fallujah and Najaf began what has so far been an unending insurgancy.

I think the ultimate message of the film is that we have absolutely no idea what we are doing in Iraq. Spc. Wilf, 19 year old high school dropout, has a better idea of what is going on and what we can achieve than Bush or Cheney. So I for one endorse something the film posted in jest: WILF FOR PRESIDENT!!