The War Tapes

There is a movie out called "The War Tapes". This is footage taken by soldiers during their missions, without any of the "hollywood" being used to craft what occurs on the screen. I haven't yet seen it, but I did catch some snippets of it on the news. I could see immediately that this is what the American people needs to see. You will see the down and dirty reality of the world these guys find themselves in. You will see cultural confusion, mayhem, things going horribly wrong, and humanity being found in the most unlikely places. It's one thing to hear narrative by those who hate this war, and by those whose job it is to put positive spin on the mission. It's something else entirely to see this world virtually thru the eyes of those who are getting shot at, without all the bullshit editing. Of course, there's no way in hell you are going to see video of American soldiers gone wrong as has been brought to light recently, but there is one incident involving a humvee vs little girl that highlights the tragedy that can occur in the least expected ways.
They say that history is recorded by the victors, and as such, the record can tend to be rather one sided. There's no way an American sitting in their easy-boy can have the same view of this war as the average Iraqi who has endured this hell over the last five years. No matter what their understanding is of religion, history, politics, geography, or this thing we call democracy, the Iraqi's viewpoint of Americans is colored by what has happened to them in the vicinity of American military power, or even the death and destruction snuck into their midsts by the insurgency and the terrorists. One way or another, Americans are going to either be blamed for what they did, or for what they didn't do, for everything that is happening now began when a brain-dead American President and his rich handlers put our fighting men in harms way for no good reason.
Even highly educated and politically astute Iraqi's now find themselves trying to survive in a world that has gone from bad to worse, and have learned giving credit to Americans for any good they might have tried to do is a no-win situation, for they can be killed just for thinking that we are anything but infidel crusaders who are occupying their country.
Anyway, thanks to portable high tech media, we are able to get first-hand glances at the truth rather than the rah-rah glossy spin that the mainstream media and our government likes to feed us. And thanks to these brave men who carried these cameras, we can make up our own minds whether or not we will write history to favor the victors, or to favor the truth, however painful it might be.