The Ground Truth: After the Killing Ends

I saw this film tonight in NYC at the Landmark Sunshine. I didn't know what to expect, I'd not read much about it as I knew I would see it no matter what. All in All, it is very well done. It doesn't focus on the generalization of "Anti-War" statements, which to me, left the politics out of it. The soldiers mainly spoke of their awareness of toxicity in their training in boot camp, and how hard it was once they returned to civilian life. It was really good to see Paul Rieckhoff and Camilo Mejia tell about the difficulty in surviving not only the war, but refusing the command to go back when it was against personal morals. Make no mistake - this is not an anti-war film. Anyone who says it is hasn't seen it or is not living with the scars of war on their souls.

This film illustrates the worst part of surviving war, the memories. For many soldiers, men and women alike, returning home can be the beginning of real problems. I am reminded of my father and his brothers returning from WWII. For one of my uncles the war was never over. He survived the D-Day invasion, something akin to the first 20 minutes of Saving Private Ryan. For him the memories not only lingered but tortured him. He became an alcoholic as did several of my cousins, his sons. Jump ahead 60 years and place the soldiers in a different war, in a different country, the result is the same. When I saw this at the KC FilmFest, I was reminded that there are somethings about war that never change. The idealistic young men and women are not spared the emotional torment of what happened in Iraq, and especially if you are against the war you will come away with more compassion for the soldiers there trying to do what they believe or have been told is right.

The tag line from the Vietnam war film Platoon says it all. "The First Casualty of War is Innocence."

Physically and emotionally traumatized veterans of the Iraq War tell their stories in this straightforward and poignant documentary. Each narrative seems eerily similar to the others—beginning with the initial lure of the Army or Marine recruiter's pitch (laced with half-truths), proceeding to the thorough mental indoctrination of basic training(essentially, psychological conditioning to master killing as a fundamental job skill), bottoming out with the paralyzing shock of actual warfare and bearing witness to death and destruction, and concluding with the return home carrying both physical and emotional scars for which the military and the government provide sporadic—if any—support. The veterans who tell their stories seem insightful, reflective, and articulate. They are not embittered or angry malcontents who feel cheated out of entitlements (although they'd have every right to be). They are simply compassionate human beings who realize that they have lost the lives they once knew and wonder why that's happened.

That is no criticism of the film, but rather a comment on how blind we are to our own past.

I recently watched Winter Soldier, and The Ground Truth was like watching a remake or sequel-- except it was about Iraq rather than Vietnam. Similar to Winter Soldier because of it's one-sided message, both films illustrate how gleefully we rush to engage in conflicts based on false pretenses, and allow our young and brave (and often naive) to bear the brunt of this greedy war profiteering. Both films effectively show that the mentality forced into the minds of the young and willing make them efficient killing machines, but the training falls woefully short of teaching the diplomatic and policing skills necessary to effectively win the hearts and minds of the people they're supposedly fighting for. This is ultimately what lost the war in Vietnam, and will likely lose the war in Iraq as well.

My only negative comment is that the film is so one-sided it could be easily passed off as left- wing propaganda. Not by me, mind you, but by those aiming to discredit the film and message. A more balanced point of view would speak to a larger audience.

One of the more bizarre things about the war in the Middle East, at least from a British perspective, was how all-too-keen we were to wade on in with the Americans in the name of fighting 'terror'. This is when, for the decades born out of the strife that followed the Irish Civil War, we nary went anywhere near an enemy far closer to home and far more prone to a defeat than any stretch of land pertaining to throw a seemingly unlimited amount of Muslims at you. We are, of course, speaking about Britain's struggle with the Irish Republican Army – an organisation whose actions over the years have meant that, even prior to the respective invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, terrorism and the threat of terrorism was nothing at all new to the U.K. There was never any conquest of The Emerald Isle, but that never stopped any Briton fervently celebrating its patron saint on March the 17th (as the day of their own, St. George, goes largely unnoticed) nor grinning affectionately when recalling the charming image of a typically lovable Irishman, whose fondness for beer is matched only by his penchant for boxing, comes to mind. There was no crusade up and down the streets and through the cities of Ireland, searching for the dogs responsible for destroying pubs and hotels up and down our country like there is in The Middle East, where untold horrors are being bestowed upon people who probably aren't even interested in the West, but are most likely becoming more and more radicalised as an invading force loiters unwelcomely.

But to an extent, I digress. In The Ground Truth, a probing American documentary from Patricia Foulkrod which is more about the mindset of the solider and how rotten, lying American politicians essentially con their young men into fighting a war they really don't want to be anywhere near, we cover more-so the process of what happens to a grunt from their basic training to the harsh realities of post-war life than any sort of political sub-study. The documentary begins in late 2005 with a Venice Beach-set inauguration, as American men enlist to join the forces. They are young and energetic; they are surrounded by advertising boards informing the onlooker of a body building product and there is very much this presence of masculinity. We learn that some signed up because a recruitment officer was convincing enough, others tell us that the allure of merely escaping one's neighbourhood and travelling the world was enough to join - one informs us they saw "Top Gun" and joined – a film which didn't even depict the Army but was about the Air Force, and was actually about Americans 'fighting' in a war that never even happened but for on the ice rinks of Lake Placid and across the chessboards of Reykjavik.

The whole thing reminds us of the opening act of Oliver Stone's "Born on the Fourth of July", made by a man who had already been there and already done that – a film wherein one's very essence of even being a man is questioned should one refute going to war. The entire process is, of course, in preparation for fighting in Iraq – arguably the biggest sham war in the history of mankind; a war so futile, unpleasant and unnecessary that everybody, from anti-war politicians who're at the top of their game anyway, right the way through to a 2008 produced episode of "Family Guy" which depicts one of its characters being told that we're in Iraq because 9/11 was induced by "a bunch of Saudi Arabians, Lebanese and Egyptians financed by a Saudi Arabian guy living in Afghanistan and sheltered by Pakistanis" have had a respective 'pop' at it.

To an extent, it is a 21st Century "Korea"; a conflict whereby, thanks to latter-day MacArthurism, we have conspired to go on an ego-centric death march into neighbouring Iraq (China) having defeated the majority of the Afghan (North Korean) army. It is a war so false and so vehemently putrid that even the pro-war American politicians want nothing to do with it in earnest: who could forget the agonising sequence in Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11", wherein he poses to several American politicians, application forms in hand, that they send their own sons over there to fight the good fight? The Ground Truth weasels out the lies Americans are told in order to sign up; tells of the realities of the fighting and the post-war fighting that the politicians don't bother with, things that are not limited to the losing of one's mind when all is said and done. Americans, in this regard, have is good and healthy: British veterans of the conflict, after having left the Army, are forced into living on the streets while immigrants who can barely speak the language are given houses – those characters in "Jarhead", a film set during Gulf War One about how conflict didn't actually kick off for some troops, never had it so good.

There was a very interesting quote I remember finding in a history text book at my old school some years ago, a quote made by an American who fought in both World War II as well as the Vietnam War. He spoke of how in WWII, you knew who your enemy was: you wore the green uniform, they wore the grey ones and the idea was to push through Europe and into Berlin. Cut to twenty years later and confusion reigns in Vietnam, where nobody knew who the enemy was; where the enemy were; where anyone was going or what anyone was trying to achieve. Some people don't like to compare Iraq to Vietnam, but the material we see and hear in Foulkrod's documentary makes it hard not to think of the above; observe what's happening and draw one's own conclusions – this is a tough, powerful work of non-fiction which works well.