Body of War

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Now that General Petreaus and Ambassador Crocker have left us -- or at least those of us who continue to wonder at how our generals (for that matter, all our officers) managed to win all those medals when we haven't had a war for more than 30 years -- the war in Iraq can now continue to be viewed as something other than a political issue. One way, one hopes, is that it will continue to be viewed as a tragic spectacle in which thousands of young Americans -- not to mention hundreds of thousands of Iraqis -- have been killed and wounded and returned home to desperate lives without the use of limbs or other body parts (including portions of the brain) and, worst of all, without anything resembling adequate medical care or support from the government they thought had promised it.

One such ex-soldier is Tomas Young, the central figure in a moving and chilling documentary film now available to Americans though the willingness of Phil Donahue to devote substantial sums of money and time to tell Young's story --and that of his emerging sense his sacrifice was in vain. The film is called Body of War and is currently available in cities across America -- wherever a Landmark theater is available, and others as distribution comes on line. There are a number of really good films about Iraq, some of them documentaries, now on view but none, I think, reaches the compelling rank of Body of War. Here, in the story told by Donahue and his filmmaker colleague Ellen Spiro, is the all-too-modern tale of a small-town American man called to the colors by the terrible events of September 11 (he enlisted two days later), believing he would be able to fight the people who had struck at the Twin Towers and who believed wholly in the glory talk of President Bush.

But Young wasn't sent to Afghanistan, where he expected -- and had been trained -- to fight the enemy, but to face an entirely different enemy -- one who had nothing to do with 9/11, Iraq. By his own account, disillusionment began for Tomas Young the day he arrived in Iraq, without preparation, and took a sniper's bullet to his neck just five days later, while riding in a truck with no roof and no armor. That, after weeks in a coma and a few weeks of treatment in Germany and America, left him paralyzed from the chest down -- for the rest of his life.

In Body of War, that life begins to take place. The documentary unsparingly treats of his physical -- and mental -- problems, with breathing, with prosthetic legs, with a fluctuating body temperature, with his sex life, and with the inevitable unraveling of his new marriage, as his wife discovers she must deal not just with his permanent pain, but her own emotional pain as well, as the role of perpetual nursemaid and a life among the bedpans begins to take on its oppressive meaning.

And intermingled with the story of Tomas Young is the crucial debate, and vote, in the United States Senate over the resolution authorizing President Bush to start the war with Iraq. The votes of the Senators -- 77-23 for the war -- almost all echoing eerily the very phrases written for them in the White House, are juxtaposed against the arguments for the Constitutional language requiring a Congressional vote to declare war, mainly in a heroic speech by 90-year-old Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia.

All in all, Donahue and Spiro have produced a bitter tale of a young man's fight to live, as well as a useful civics lesson. Not your usual documentary, Body of War is a superb example of how film can illuminate human lives.

Comments

[kellygrrrl]

I wish they would show this film in every middle school and high school classroom.

[akaJohnQ]

When I consider the costs of the Iraq war : over 4000 Amercan troops killed, many thousands of American troops wounded, thousands of devistated American families, hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis killed and wounded, the destruction of Iraq, trillions of American dollars wasted, the neglect of the war in Afganistan, loss of respect for the U.S. by many people around the world, and the way it has divided the American people, I have to conclude that any possible good that comes from it will be hard pressed to overcome the bad.

[woodsywizz]

I too am appalled by the misdirection, the sacrifice, and the sorrow of this war. I called it "the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time" in 2002. But as a serving veteran, I have one point. We have been at war continuously since 1945. People died every day. You, as a civilian - SO far above us - did not notice that Americans all around you were training for war, and engaging in it in places you did not bother to notice. Now there's a big war, and you deign to remark on it. I'm appalled. You need not google every conflict we've been in for the "last 30 years" which you think were a Teddy bear's picnic. And about those "medals" you disdain - I've got some, and I can tell you stories of pain and sacrifice for one sacred purpose: the preservation of our nation and its Constitution. WE do not get to pick the wars we fight in. YOU did not bother to vote, and get out the vote, to elect people who would prevent them. Each one of those "medals" represents many people WHO DID NOT DIE because of what we did - what we do, and are still doing. The horrors of the Iraq war were thrust upon us, the military. Because you yourself did not do your due diligence. So get off your high horse. You're the reason we're stuck here. Thanks. That's just what I needed, before I die.

[Desiderata]

Woodsywizz,

What can any of us say to you that could possibly express all that needs to be said. Of course you are right. Mr. Mankiewicz should personally respond to what you have written.

We are engaged in much rancorist retoric about this war and about this President because doing so is like putting our fingers in our ears and screaming to drown out the horror the spews up from our own guilty souls.

Again, you are so right that we as a people allowed these things to happen. We are indeed the reason you are "stuck" there. It is just easier to believe all of the fault lies with the corrupt forces of our own government than because of anything we have done or not done.

As Phil Donahue said to Bill Moyers, "This is not the country my father taught me to pledge allegiance to."

We're the generation that whines about the cost of gas, yet fights every windmill that would obstruct the scenery or hum too loud. We're the generation that drugs our children so they behave in class and at home. We're the generation that so hates to pay taxes that we allow soldiers to go to war on the cheap, come home to cheap medical care or in lines of flag-draped coffins in cargo bays .

And what you say matters. You, unlike most of us, have earned the right to heard. And reading what you wrote has had a powerful effect on me.

[DavePM]

I'm in the same boat as you. Thanks for saying what all of us still serving and those who served are thinking when we read this article.

s/f, DPM

[jdm58]

Tomas is a living example of the power of the human spirit:
http://www.bodyofwar.com/