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The strongest scenes in "Fahrenheit 9/11" come when Michael Moore trains his lens on service members and their families. "Strong at the Broken Places," a just-completed documentary tracing the lives and deaths of five soldiers, doesn't have Moore's production values. But where conspiracy theory distracts Moore's tour de farce, Dick Mahoney's "Broken Places" largely ignores the "why" of the Iraq war in favor of the "whom." It's the story of the warriors, made with the hope that it will force better future thinking out Washington's warmakers.
Both films are part of a historic burst of liberal documentary filmmaking that follows the release of a string of Bush-bashing books. The films step up where antiwar songs have been absent. In addition to the films by Moore and Mahoney, there's "Fog of War," "Control Room," "Bush's Brain" and "The Hunting of the President." (So much for the vast, right-wing conspiracy.)
"Broken Places" takes it name from the Hemingway novel "A Farewell to Arms": "The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places." The life of former senator Max Cleland, the Georgia Democrat and Vietnam vet, is used as a vehicle to sketch the stories of lost soldiers and indict President Bush for erroneously linking Iraq to "the war on terror." Cleland, who came back from Vietnam as triple amputee, leans heavily on the faith he learned as a little boy in the white framed Baptist church in the Georgia woods. "This old tree was pruned back in Vietnam," he says, pulling broken soldiers and grieving relatives through what he calls their "silent sadness." They aren't hard to find, with the Pentagon barring people like Jane Bright, the mother of Sgt. Evan Ashcraft, from witnessing soldiers unload her son's coffin from a transport plane at the Burbank Airport in California.
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"Broken Places" honors soldiers like Pfc. Alan Lewis, who grew up on Chicago's South Side. Stray bullets killed his sister and best friend when he was growing up, and his father was shot dead in a robbery. But Alan followed his dreams into the Army, and Iraq, where last July he drove over an anti-tank mine that blew off his legs and dislodged an eye and an arm. Alan, 23, still smiles at the thought of March 2003, when he was the tip of the spear that the United States launched into Iraq. "The rockets lit the sky, and there were all these explosions all around," Alan said. "I could hear 'The Star-Spangled Banner'." He still wears one dog tag around his neck, having lost the other tied to his bootlaces. Alan doesn't want the United States to pull out of Iraq. "I've lost brothers over there," he says. "Hopefully the country will do better and a monument will be built being proud of us for what we did."
The film also honors the war's Jimmy Adamouskis. Captain Adamouski was a billboard for overachievement. The Black Hawk helicopter pilot was at the top of his class at West Point, a semipro soccer player in Europe, and had just been accepted into Harvard Business School. But before going to grad school he volunteered for a single tour in Iraq. "Father Jimmy," as they called him, brought holy communion to soldiers on the front, and that's where he was killed in action in April 2003. Jimmy's mother, Judy, still supports the war.
The costs of fighting a war in Iraq are as complex as they are painful. Some of this axe-grinding crop of documentaries can be overwrought. And perhaps the majority of soldiers and Marines standing in Iraqi sand right now don't have time for sentimentality. They believe the dictum that war is politics by another means, that the politics that had run Iraq had made the world an unsafe place. More important, the films leave the impression that lefties don't offer solutions so much as regrets. Sure enough, hardly anyone in these movies will definitively state Dennis Kucinich's absolute line: "Let's get out." The closest anyone comes is an anonymous soldier with the 82d Airborne, who asks the camera, "How many soldiers need to die before U.S. policy will change?"
There are more political films to come before Nov. 2: John Sayles's "Silver City," George Butler's bio-doc about his college friend John Kerry, HBO's follow-up to "Journeys with George." As for "Strong at the Broken Places," 750 people came to its premiere a few nights ago at the New School University in New York City. Perhaps a million more will see it before the presidential election (producer Dick Mahoney says he's signing a deal next week with a major cable network). "I hope it has impact beyond November," said Bob Kerrey, the dean of the New School and former Democratic senator from Nebraska who was also a Navy SEAL in Vietnam.
It's hard to say whether the films will effect Nov. 2. Alan Lewis lost both his legs in a war he's not totally convinced was worth fighting. But, having met both Bush and Kerry, he's still an undecided voter. If the June 30 handover of power is the beginning of a successful democratic Iraq, the lost American service members will have paid the ultimate price for something real. But if today's simmering chaos is as good as it gets, all those dead patriots will haunt George W. Bush.
MAIL CALL
Readers respond to the last War Stories column, about the military's use of private contractors:
Army Capt. Kris Alexander, military intelligence, wrote:
I think what you failed to add was how the military feels about these guys [private military contractors]. We don't like it. Most of them are cowboys. We also see no reason that these jobs can't be accomplished with soldiers. We feel that we lack the political will to call up the right amount of reserves and guard to do the job. The guard says it's stretched too thin, but there are large units that have yet to be touched. A lot of us feel that contractors will be the death of the military. It's already broken the service support branches. Why do we have to eat in crappy KBR [Kellogg Brown & Root] chow halls that have no incentive to make a decent meal?
A private security contractor working in Bosnia wrote:
I'm tired of hearing about all these macho, mercenary contractors running around unsupervised in Iraq. I think the media doesn't quite get it. The military has been using contractors for years to provide continuity and expertise for a variety of complicated specialties. There are a lot of contractors who do not carry weapons, who work in a professional manner, who work closely with their units and who have been training with the military for years. All that without making the big bucks that we're all supposedly making in Iraq. We support [the U.S. military] in garrison, we support them on exercises and, now that the time has come, we support them during war. About 98 percent of us are veterans. My nonmilitary family members wonder how I can leave my two toddlers to run off to places like Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. My retiree father tells them, "Because that's what she does." Is the money nicer than a military salary? Hell, yes. Is the money worth leaving my two sweet, wonderful children without a mother? Hell, no. The problem is this: to some people patriotism is more than just singing the national anthem at a baseball game.
Sean Hill, Fort Carson, Colo., wrote:
I just came back from Iraq, and I think I know what the military's main problem about retention is. Yes, the bonus is nice, if you receive it. I know of five soldiers in my platoon that haven't even gotten their initial enlistment bonus, and they have been in the Army for over two years and served in Iraq. If this is the Army's plan for recruiting and retention, then they need to start paying us what we have coming. This last remark is for my fellow soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan: stay strong and don't look down, I'm looking forward to replacing you on my next tour to the sand box.
Justine Farewell, Lebanon N.H., wrote:
Hi, I'm sending this e-mail to the soldiers to tell you how brave you are and how proud I am of all of you. You're out there defending our country. You're far away from your family and friends and that can't be too easy. So you keep up the good work and soon you will be back with your family again. My dad used to tell me that things don't always seem what they are, and if they're not what you were expecting then shake it off and pick yourself up and try it again. So I'm sending that message to you all.
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