but what about the kids?!?!?!

Saw Redacted last night. In case you don't know, Redacted is the controversial anti war film directed by Brian DePalma. it's controversial because it realistically recreates an incident (that actually happened) where u.s. soldiers raped a 15 year iraqi old girl and then killed her and her whole family. the movie also contains images of the iraqi dead and wounded. Bill O'reily and right wing veterans groups (as opposed to Iraq Veterans Against the War - http://www.ivaw.org/) have called for a boycott, and there were a handful o flag waiving protesters in fatigues outside the theater with signs urging us not to see the movie.

Although realistic enough to be sickening, i was a little disappointed with the pace, lack of sophistication, and melodrama. the movie plays like an anthology, compiling a story about the events leading up to the rape/ murder and after through a film student's camera, television news reports, you tube postings, terrorist jihad tapes, and home video. its a great idea, but i felt it was poorly executed. the events immediately preceding the rape - e.g. the planning of it - seemed too horrible to be true, but then i asked myself, "how else could it have happened?"

i couldn't come up with better answers

on the train ride back (we saw it at the ritz at the bourse in philly), Patty made an interesting observation: it was almost as if the movie spoke on a immature teenage level, unlike another ultra realistic based on true event anti war film we enjoyed: The Road to Guantanamo.

and when i thought about it, she was right, and i concluded THIS IS WHAT MAKES REDACTED A FAR MORE IMPORTANT ANTI WAR MOVIE.

Check out my older posts "A worthy cause" and "This Veterans Day, Support Free Speech". It was writing those posts that i came to the conclusion that any anti war movement in this country is better aimed at high schools and high school students than at memorials in washington d.c. unlike adults who watch the news (who have by and large been asked to sacrifice nothing for this war), kids in high school are being pressed by recruiters to enlist in murder sport. by large, adults are too smart, too settled, too established, or too vested in civilian life to join such a losing cause. in fact, high school senior year is probably the only place where a recruiter could find hordes of young and fit people, naive to the ways of the world, and who are scared shitless about the future because everything in their life (from what constitutes success to who they hang out with) is about to get thrown out the window.

if you're somebody in high school, chances are you know somebody who has or is thinking about enlisting. it probably scares you to think they might get hurt, die, be forced to kill people, maim people, destroy homes, and come back mentally fucked even if they come back in one piece. that's why we need to start sending the message to these kids. opposing the war and distrusting recruiters needs to become a fad. kids need to wear it on their t-shirts, have the message in their music. musicians need to pull successful high school resistors on stage to jam or feature them in their videos. movies need to be made about their efforts. and the media needs to be pressured into treating these kids like the brave patriots they are.

they need to hang flyers around their on recruitment days that read something like this:

in war you do worse things to people you don't know then you'd ever do to your worst enemy

in war, people will be trying to kill you. and if you die at war, you'll die a painfull dirty death, bleeding on the street in agony. you won't get to say goodbye to your mom, your dad, or your brothers. worse, they won't get to say goodbye to you, and you family will be forever scared.

for every soldier who gets kills, many many more get maimed. soldiers lose fingers, arms, eyes, noses, legs, and even their penises.

we were lied to about the reasons for the war. there were never weapons of mas destruction, there was no al quida in ira until the war created porous borders. the iraqi people, by and large, were better off under saddam huesein, and the world was better off with his regime controlling iraq than with the civil war we instigated.

the people in iraq never did anything to us. they had nothing to do with terrorism, and nothing to do with 9/11. the only reason we're over there is because a bunch of greedy oilmen fucked up.

to the iraqi people, we are an invading army, and it's only natural that they would want us to leave

if you are a woman, your chances of being raped in the military are far greater than in civilian life. and this isn't because of war: it is male soldiers doing the raping. and unlike in civilian life, the problem has been largely un-addressed as male soldiers and their officers cover for each other. women who report being raped often hurt their military career by doing so.