No Film at 11
Luke Thompson, San Francisco Weekly
Everyone with a TV remembers President Bush in the flight suit, landing on that aircraft carrier, standing in front of a "Mission Accomplished" banner, and triumphantly declaring that major combat operations in Iraq were over. Two years on, many feel like asking what he meant by that move.
Gunner Palace makes no bones about it. Opening with footage taken in Iraq on Sept. 5, 2003, the film informs is with subtitles that what we're seeing is, according to Bush's declaration, "minor combat." To the U.S. soldiers, it's not much different: They're still being shot at, and pinpointing the enemy is a pain and a half. Trained to fight a Russian advance during the Cold War, conditioned to become men who "live to blow stuff up," the soldiers now find themselves having to become a combination of social worker, peacekeeper, and politician in addition to being able to shoot back when shot at. Having dismantled a country, they now find themselves having to put it back together again, which strikes most of them as a tad incongruous.
Documentarian Michael Tucker made two trips to Baghdad, where he stayed with the troops in a bombed-out former residence of Uday Hussein that had been converted into a barracks and renamed Gunner Palace. Complete with three putting greens, a fishing pond, a large swimming pool, and the highest ceilings most of the military men have ever seen in their lives, it's described by one man as "an adult's paradise," although alcohol is banned and sex is only hinted at in the mildest of ways (a coed dance at a pool party).
As we vicariously tag along with Tucker on midnight raids of suspected terrorist households, watch soldiers look after abandoned war orphans, see them train Iraqi civil-defense forces and hold up traffic while they check for explosive devices, you may wonder: Why don't we see this kind of thing on the news every night? Undoubtedly military censorship comes into play, but probably more so it's the prevailing notion that talking-head shoutfests stacked with pundits bring in the ratings, while actual field reporting costs more money.
Indeed, seeing biased nut cases on both sides of a given issue yell at each other is entertainment, but it'll be an interesting world if we have to start depending on movies for the real story. Donald Rumsfeld recently got into hot water when a soldier questioned him about having to armor military vehicles with scrap metal; Tucker's footage proves that this was an issue two years ago, as one soldier demonstrates (much to the amusement of his colleagues) how the new panels he culled from a junk heap will keep the shrapnel in your body rather than having it blow clean through.
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What may surprise many viewers -- especially those with no direct connection to the military -- is the degree to which the soldiers seem anti-war by the movie's end. Several go on record saying, more or less, that there is nothing that can be gained by taking any human life. Others merely wonder why they spent so much time destroying a country that they now have to rebuild, or inquire as to what exactly will define victory. Though specific left/right political sides aren't taken, Rumsfeld's name eventually starts to evoke derision every time it comes up.
It doesn't seem like we have any good answers for them. But we could start by paying attention to their stories.
Luke Thompson, San Francisco Weekly
