The War Tapes: A moving documentary of 3 soldiers in Iraq

by Derich Mantonela

SGN A&E Writer

Opens Friday at the Varsity

Deborah Scranton’s angle on the Iraq War, so basic that one wonders why nobody seems to have done it before, was to give digital cameras to some of our soldiers heading over there and let them shoot film along with their guns.  They also shoot their mouths off quite a bit, and what comes out isn’t always what we’ve been geared to expect.

   “War Tapes,” gleaned from over a thousand hours of footage, focuses on three New Hampshire National Guardsmen sent to Iraq during the escalating Insurgency of 2004, Sergeants Zack Brazzi and Steven Pink and Specialist Mike Moriarty. 

At first, these men seem as typical of the American soldiers serving over there as one is going to find.  Young, dedicated to their families, just getting started in life and not at all certain about its direction, cockiness masking fear and uncertainty, their personalities in flux.

In other words, they are the classic, basic fodder fed to a dubious, out of control war which more and more looks like our second Vietnam.

            But while we, from our comfy armchairs, condescend to impose Liberal generalizations on them, Brazzi, Pink and Moriarty have plenty to experience before they come to their own World View of this war, conclusions they will base on “upfront and personal” experiences which we can barely imagine or comprehend.

            We will see that some of our guys go over there out of a personal, perhaps simplistic, patriotic idealism but that most go because they are sent there, ready and willing or not.

            What follows, in “War Tapes,” are their observations, not ours, and it is not for us to agree or to disagree but to learn from what they learn.

            Once our guys are there, the nitty-gritty of reality takes hold.  A complex country, a complex people, fatally divided by religion and by politics and by history and now by outright war.  Most of our guys arrive there stone cold about much of that.

            Priority one is safety, but the sober reality is that equipment and logistics are mostly lacking to insure that.  Bombs and snipers are everywhere and some of the people are bombs.

            Soldiers being friendly with cute local kids is mitigated by soldiers wondering which of those kids can be trusted.  Soldiers helping citizens restore their plumbing and electricity and rebuilding schools and medical clinics is contrasted with all of that being destroyed on a daily basis, sometimes by “friendly fire.”  Meanwhile, 600,000 (the population of Seattle within its city limits) have died as of today, and counting.

            Morale, sometimes a soldier’s last defense, seems to be relatively high.  Americans under stress have a knack for seeing the humor in almost anything.  It keeps us sane.  And we are good at doing our jobs, when pride is at stake.  Stay focused and stay alive.  Male bonding comes to the fore.  A certain homoeroticism makes for good soldiering.  Love and protect your buddies.

            Our three unsung heroes plunge into the maelstrom, and the stereotypes come toppling down.

            We’re there to protect Halliburton, so that Dick Cheney’s friends can be billionaire war profiteers.  We’re there to stake our dominion over the oil (which at least one of the guys concludes is a GOOD reason).  

            One of the soldiers quips lightly about having seen a dog tear at the flesh of a freshly-dismembered corpse, insisting that it was no big deal.  But he protests too much, and we see in his eyes that the scene will haunt and torture him for the rest of his life.

            Interspersed with the soldiers’ footage is some taken back home of their wives, families and countrymen going about the anxious business of life without them.  This is somehow a bit less compelling, and might have been mostly dispersed with.      By the time “War Tapes” is finished, we already know that these are men with families, who love their country, if to different degrees and for various reasons, and who in fact are us if we were in their shoes.

            Whatever conclusions and philosophies have been derived by these men by this point are hard won, earned and deserved, tinged with an awful melancholy.