The Hurt Locker has really stayed with me.
I saw it almost 6 months ago, yet still I will chat up anyone who tells me they’ve seen the movie – okay, and even people who haven’t. I want to talk about it. And I never want to talk.
So, instead of annoying strangers who are able to see me and provide an accurate description to the police, I will annoy you guys who can only provide a vague description of an elusive Kasier Soze-esque “Dawn Summers” figure.
Now, I should preface this note with a few things: I am, politically, a liberal Democrat. My family lived in Panama during “The Invasion” and my grandparents’ apartment complex was hit by missiles during the fighting. I also have a cousin who did a tour in Iraq during Gulf War 1 and two tours during Gulf War 2. And he’s not one of those cousins I don’t like.
However, I am not a hippie.
If blood for oil is cheaper than the damn 3.15 per gallon that I’m paying at the pump now, I’m in. I mean, not me, of course, I am fat and lazy; but feel free to send whoever you need to send, on my taxpayer dime, to blow up whatever needs blowing up to keep Prince Eli running. My principled stance during the run up to President Bush’s Afghanistan/Iraq wars was simple: if it will keep America safe, do it. My feeling was if “the terrorists” want to kill Americans, US soldiers in the region are easier to get to than American civilians going to work on a crisp Tuesday morning. And, ideally, American soldiers are better equipped to a) withstand such attacks and b) retaliate with an effective vengeance. I never believed “W” was as stupid as he’s oft-depicted.
However.
And I think this is one of the themes the Hurt Locker highlighted beautifully, engaging in a war where the people of the country are not your enemy is complicated and tricky. Yes, we attacked Iraq, but we claimed it was a benevolent attack. We’re not destroying you, we’re freeing you! Look at all the freedom we’re giving you! Just respect our checkpoints, don’t use cellphones around our soldiers, follow orders from teenagers who don’t speak your language and submit to all searches. The scene in the movie when the guy goes to use his cellphone, a common method of detonating bombs remotely, still ties my stomach in knots. The director kinda cops out, in my opinion, by making it so that the guy on the phone *is* detonating a bomb. But what if he wasn’t? What if he was just a father buying a newspaper when the wife or kid calls with some emergency or another, he doesn’t speak English, so the shouting behind him doesn’t mean anything? He would have essentially been killed for talking on the phone! The same with the taxicab that violates the checkpoint perimeter (although, I felt that scene was pretty contrived. You don’t have to speak English to understand a gun being pointed at you and three men waving you backwards.) Here is a cabbie, just doing his job, and these soldiers have destroyed his vehicle and detained him. How is this freedom?
But the flipside is these soldiers know that the enemy, the terrorists, disguise themselves as ordinary civilians every day! They use the cloak of mundane objects and activities to carry out deadly plots to kill American soldiers. The guy on the cellphone could be the enemy; the taxi cab driver could be loaded up with explosives. They have to treat everyone like a threat; it’s simple survival instinct.
There is no right answer. Yet, if you are a young Iraqi boy, say 9 or ten, pretty much your entire life, you’ve seen the elders in your community bowing to the power of these Americans with guns. How can you respect your father when you know that a man, not that much older than can make your dad lie, face first, in the desert sand while he is searched? When your mother and sisters can barely walk the streets in fear of harm from their own people and this occupying force, how can you ever feel secure? Is this freedom?
When I was 11 or 12, race riots broke out in my neighborhood between the black people who lived there and the Korean grocers who worked there. A black woman was badly beaten after she was accused of shoplifting or something. Anyway, the police, in full riot gear, set up a mobile police unit smack in the middle of the affected block. They patrolled, in helmets and vests, with huge automatic weapons out. The whole operation was located two blocks away from the subway station my mom used to go to and from work. Anyway, one day, I’m coming home with her and there’s a huge puddle on the left side of the street. My mom tries to cross diagonally to the other side to avoid it. She is stopped by a cop with said huge ass gun who tells her to stay on the other side.
As you all well know by now, my mom be crazy, and she refused. As you all also well know by now, I be chicken shit. I was gripping her hand so tightly, she pulled it away and glared at me.
My mom won that battle of the wills. And her frightening powers grew that much more in my eyes, but I imagine her success has much more to do with the fact that she was dealing with a local police force, spoke the same language and, as a woman, with a young girl with her, posed little threat. How differently this scene plays out in occupied Iraq. It weighs on me. What do we owe these innocent civilians in this war of geographic convenience? What of these children who will grow up with little choice but to see us as the enemy?
They will never know Saddam, just Uncle Sam.