Wall Street Journal First-Person Plural October 15, 2004 At a time when shrill political diatribes dominate the documentary scene, along comes an authentic work that dares to let the subject speak for itself -- literally. This spring, film producers Eric Manes, Martin Kunert and Archie Drury sent 150 digital video cameras to Iraq and invited Iraqis to tape whatever they wanted -- and then pass the cameras onto someone else. The three had no idea how the victims of first Saddam Hussein and then of the chaos that accompanied his fall would react. By the end of last month, the producers had received some 450 hours of footage, taped all over the country with some 2,000 Iraqis. The scenes in their completed film, "Voices of Iraq" (www.voicesofiraq.com), come as a shock. Yes, there is a mother sobbing in her kitchen because her son and four other family members have just been killed in the crossfire between U.S. soldiers and looters. There are stunned survivors picking through the ruins of a church bombed by insurgents. A tiny baby died there; its burned mother lies in a coma and its father has gone insane. But mostly, overwhelmingly, there are signs of life and optimism. Iraqis have filmed themselves in busy streets, bustling markets and a packed amusement park, the bulbs on its rides lighting up the night sky. There is a jubilant graduation ceremony at Baghdad University, with singing, dancing and squirted confetti, and street celebrations after Iraq placed fourth in soccer at its first Olympics since 1988. Yes, a few people tell the camera that it was better under Saddam, and in Baghdad many express fear or bitterness about the lack of security. In general, though, the Iraqis have taped each other making plans for the future: celebrating the freedom to get a passport or an e-mail address and to write, broadcast and express any opinion they like. We see people rebuilding a children's theater; artists talking about the contribution they will make to world culture; a heavy-metal band whose members improved their English studying Megadeth and Metallica CDs; a young boy making a direct appeal to Arnold Schwarzenegger for some real weights with which to build his own (scrawny) body. Their enthusiasm and resilience are mind-boggling. So, too, is their ability to put even the most infamous acts in perspective. As one man says: "The Abu Ghraib scandal has shaken your country -- but those prisoners were Saddam's henchmen. What you saw on TV: I was personally tortured by those [Iraqis] and tortured much worse." And in August, when the campaign of bombings surges in Baghdad, the people in the videos don't curse the U.S. One man blames Saddam for giving shelter to Islamic radicals for years. But most also blame their neighbors in the region, whose real target, as one man asserts, is Iraq itself: "Many Arabian governments think the democracy success in Iraq is a danger for them, so they cooperate with all the terrorists in the world." "Voices of Iraq" is not easy to watch, especially when the voices are so optimistic: "I want to be a lawyer," "I want Iraq to be the greatest country in the world," "I want to get married." What if they're wrong? (Their comments are intercut with Internet videos made by insurgents planting bombs.) Then again, who knows better what is possible than the people of Iraq themselves? It's good that Messrs. Manes and Kunert (who cut their teeth on MTV reality TV) and Mr. Drury thought to ask them. http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB109779473399546055,00.html
Well here is an American voice from Iraq. It should be noted that some of the Iraqis who might want to go to school and be lawyers are being killed needlessly by the occupation forces. *********** Seymour Hersh spoke at Berkeley last Friday, October 8th. He told a story about recently receiving a call from an American lieutenant in Iraq who'd just witnessed other American soldiers killing non-combatant Iraqis. I typed up what he said from the Real Video file here. HERSH: I got a call last week from a soldier -- it's different now, a lot of communication, 800 numbers. He's an American officer and he was in a unit halfway between Baghdad and the Syrian border. It's a place where we claim we've done great work at cleaning out the insurgency. He was a platoon commander. First lieutenant, ROTC guy. It was a call about this. He had been bivouacing outside of town with his platoon. It was near, it was an agricultural area, and there was a granary around. And the guys that owned the granary, the Iraqis that owned the granary... It was an area that the insurgency had some control, but it was very quiet, it was not Fallujah. It was a town that was off the mainstream. Not much violence there. And his guys, the guys that owned the granary, had hired, my guess is from his language, I wasn't explicit -- we're talking not more than three dozen, thirty or so guards. Any kind of work people were dying to do. So Iraqis were guarding the granary. His troops were bivouaced, they were stationed there, they got to know everybody... They were a couple weeks together, they knew each other. So orders came down from the generals in Baghdad, we want to clear the village, like in Samarra. And as he told the story, another platoon from his company came and executed all the guards, as his people were screaming, stop. And he said they just shot them one by one. He went nuts, and his soldiers went nuts. And he's hysterical. He's totally hysterical. And he went to the captain. He was a lieutenant, he went to the company captain. And the company captain said, "No, you don't understand. That's a kill. We got thirty-six insurgents." You read those stories where the Americans, we take a city, we had a combat, a hundred and fifteen insurgents are killed. You read those stories. It's shades of Vietnam again, folks, body counts... You know what I told him? I said, fella, I said: you've complained to the captain. He knows you think they committed murder. Your troops know their fellow soldiers committed murder. Shut up. Just shut up. Get through your tour and just shut up. You're going to get a bullet in the back. You don't need that. And that's where we are with this war. link
I guess we will find out in due time if Hersh's story is true or not. In the interim, I still find the optimism of the Iraqi people amazing, and noone can doubt the accuracy of Voices of Iraq. It's weird how guys like Hersh seem to miss these stories.
