On The Iraq War & The Loss of Certain Traditional Values

Ok, I know that this is going to see like a strange thing at first for me to be writing a blog entry about. But stay with me but I'm getting around to everybody's favorite topic, Iraq.

CNN has a review online today of the film, '300' which opens this weekend. Long story short, it's based on a graphic novel by the brilliant (and formerly local) Frank Miller. '300' is the more or less true story of 300 Spartan warriors who fought an epic battle against around 100,000 Persian troops. The Spartans eventually lost, although their valor in the face of such absurd odds is legendary.

But it's not the movie that concerns me so much as the review. A quick read of it indicates that the reviewer doesn't like the film more or less because of the war in Iraq, to which he makes several references. Witness the following excerpt:

"...it's not so much the body count or even the blood lust that's disturbing. It's that the film, with its macho militarism, seems out of step in a war-weary time.

"Gerard Butler's glaring, glowering, bombastic Spartan king Leonidas is the Jim Jones of military strategists: never retreat, never surrender, death on the battlefield is the greatest glory. The rhetoric echoes sentiments expressed by Japanese imperial loyalists in Clint Eastwood's "Letters from Iwo Jima," but there's no criticism implied here. These are the good guys."

The war in Iraq is having an effect on American culture more far-reaching than most people even realize. It was my great fear when we went into this thing that such an obvious disaster would discredit the very idea of international intervention and paralyze the US internationally for the next 50 years or longer. But something even worse is happening. The basic ideas of valor, loyalty and determination in combat are no longer respected. Courage is almost laughed at. We are witnesses to the loss of values fundamental to western civilization, stretching from America all the way back through Britain, Rome and Greece, where those 300 Spartans faced down the invading Persian army.

Right this second, without resorting to Google, can you name a single decorated American war hero from the war in Iraq? It's not as if there aren't soliders and Marines over there doing extraordinarily heroic things in battle every day. It's that nobody cares enough to tell their stories anymore. Not the Bush administration, not the media, not the general public. This is not a problem coming from the right wing or the left wing. It's everybody.

The human face of war is two-fold. It is the horror stories of the civilians who get caught in the middle and it is also the tales of valor, audacity and sacrifice on the part of some of the soldiers who fight. We should be shocked at the sight of an apartment building hit by a stray mortar and we should also honor stories about Marines who crawl through enemy fire to evacuate a wounded comrade or overpower an enemy ambush despite being outnumbered 10 to 1. We need films and documentaries that show the evil side of war and we need films like '300' to honor courage and skill in the face of nightmarish odds.

The failure of the war in Iraq to acheive our goals since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein is discrediting not only the notion of overseas military intervention but the very idea of standing up for something in battle even though you know you're probably going to die. I don't know what one can really do about either of these problems at this point, save to go see '300' this weekend and do try to make a point of voting for Presidential candidates with some notion of foreign affairs in the future.


Disclaimer: Frank Miller and I are fellow homebrewers and he once gave me a bottle of his 'Sin City' beer back in '99 or 2000 before I had any idea who he was. So perhaps I am linclined to defend his work in the first place.