Generation Kill

Recently I’ve been watching Generation Kill, the awesome miniseries based on the awesome book of the same name. It follows the path of the Marine First Recon Division, an ‘elite’ (the word is used generously…[1]) team of soldiers, during the initial stages of the U.S led invasion of Iraq. Their barely armored and barely working Humvees fronting as the twenty first century version of cavalry, the Marines- with entrenched reporter in tow- saunter across Iraq, trying to- as their Commanding Officer so often informs to the viewer- to get in the game.

It’s the culmination of every war movie ever. It has the ‘Life of a Soldier sucks’ vibe of Jarhead, the bravado of Full Metal Jacket, and the intensity of Black Hawk Down. It’s poignant because it’s not actually poignant at all, and so neutral you start to wonder if it’s propaganda for some secret third side of the war that you haven’t heard about yet.

But when they aren’t shooting –which is most of the time -, it’s an epic roadtrip that masquerades as a war series. It’s Jack Kerouac with a Avril Lavigne CD, a metric tonne of Ammo, and an undying yearning to hear the words “Light ‘Em the Fuck Up”.

What’s most interesting about Generation Kill is it’s discourse on the morality of war- simply put, there isn’t any. Yeah, they’re killing people, but they’re also kids who are hepped up on sugar, automatic weaponry and on the trip of a lifetime. For every time they do something bad –when the backseat buddy (no, that’s not a coy euphemism…) of the journalist accidentally shoots a couple of kids-, there’s a moment of collective disbelief as the ineptitude of superior officers/ the army/ reservists/ the ROE, basically anything not an infantry Marine. Yeah, they cheer when a building (which ‘may’ have been an enemy facility) is bombed, but the when the camera shows the explosion, you think ‘Who the fuck wouldn’t be excited if saw something like that?’

Since the start of the Iraq conflict, it’s probably fair to say that any kind of attempt to accurately portray life in Iraq has failed, and that the resulting media has either fallen into two categories:

1) The Baby Killers 2: Revenge of the Baby Killers, also here’s some unrelated shit about 9/11 concpiracies, because anybody opposed to the war is a far out lefty who checks under their bed for Jews every night. And I don’t mean the good kind of Jew, I mean the bad kind.

2: America Rocks: I’ll bet the terrorists were going to use that school/hospital/ hospital that has a school attached for evil, so it’s totally justified. Also, I’ll bet they taught intelligent design in there.

Which makes me wonder, why is it, that after a being involved in a conflict nigh on six years, the most accurate portrayal of the war in Iraq has been a fiction one? Why is it that ‘documentations’- and I use that word in the broadest sense possible, you know, like when I call myself satisfied, or Stevie Nicks a living legend (both of which are broad descriptors for Ms Nicks)- aren’t able to create a compelling story about Iraq, yet the people who cancelled Deadwood[2] can?

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[1] Which isn’t to say they’re not awesome, just their conduct is hardly becoming of something you’d call ‘elite.’

[2] Yes, I Understand that their relationships are tenuous at best.