[NYTr] "In the Valley of Elah": David and Goliath in Iraq

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Counterpunch - October 20 / 21, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.org/landau10202007.html

"In the Valley of Elah"
David and Goliath in Iraq

By SAUL LANDAU

"In the Valley of Elah" has Hollywood relying on cell phone images from
Iraq that Mike Deerfield sent to his father via email. Despite the
amateur sound and picture quality, we discern armed soldiers riding in
a vehicle, the sounds of cursing, a man screaming in pain and others
laughing. A still photo shows a burned out VW bus, a dead body and
group of young boys running toward camera in a Baghdad neighborhood.
The clues for a mystery!

What happened to retired MP Sergeant (Tommy Lee Jones) Hank Deerfield's
son, Mike? This frozen digital instant in time and the audio visual
records of early 21st Century warfare might also provide future
anthropologists with some idea of the lunacy of our time.

Mike sent his Dad these cell-phone videos that show in blurry,
sometimes semi audible form how the Iraq war has drained the soldiers'
empathy. The young men just back from Iraq look normal, act politely
and courteously--a facade covering their semi psychotic, drug addicted
selves. Indeed, the film shows that Iraq has destroyed the psychic
integrity of those young people who served there. That conclusion
should become grounds for declaring a state of larger political and
cultural distress.

The older Deerfield, a Vietnam vet and now a gravel hauler, retains his
military police discipline. He travels to an army base in New Mexico to
find his son, AWOL shortly after returning from Iraq. His character
remains military: he shines his shoes, presses his trousers and makes
his bed military fashion. This stubborn racist, determined to find his
son, remains confident that his beloved military will help him.

En route, he shows a Salvadoran groundskeeper the proper way to fly the
American flag--fly it upside down only to show distress, a call for
help.

Mike had telephones from Iraq: "Get me out of here," in tears, he
pleaded with his Dad. The pain flashes on the sergeant's face. He
mutters a cliché. "Stay safe." The helpless father hopes his son "will
get over it"--the stress of combat.

American grit means: Your country calls; you serve. I've met Sgt.
Deerfield in bars, at ball games and airports. I've had him in my
classes at universities. His religious loyalty remained an article of
faith, until Iraq. When the President calls, you don't question
legalities and procedures. You serve -- even after the trauma of
Vietnam, when a lot of Deerfields returned bitter. "They [the
politicians] didn't let us win," is the refrain, still heard on right
wing talk shows referring to the lack of political will--as if winning
was a possibility.

Iraq, like Vietnam, doesn't relate to courage and valor; nor defending
"our country." How many veterans have now asked: did the United States
have a legal or moral reason to intervene?

Some soldiers still justify their behavior by referring to "obeying
orders," but only the most dense and dogmatic actually talk seriously
about either conflict as bringing democracy or freedom to these lands.

We know what happens to young men and women who kill innocent people,
including small children, when the actual rules of daily engagement
condone the murder of such innocents under the guise of self-protection.

After Vietnam, many who returned physically whole suffered from severe
mental gaps, not just difficult periods of adjustment but permanent
disabilities that left them homeless and perhaps psychotic.

Mike's emailed images and the subsequent testimony of his former
comrades provide the craggy faced Deerfield with meager clues to such
psychosis. In the barracks the men in his son's unit show him deference
and respect, address him as sir--as they pathologically lie

The mystery of Mike being AWOL gets solved when Mike's dismembered and
charred body parts are found. In trying to learn why Mike was killed,
Hank delves ever deeper into the reality Mike had just experienced. The
unrelenting and nameless roadside bombs have changed the face of even
the war rules for a Vietnam style engagement. Orders given override
basic humanity. For survival, "do not stop" to avoid a young boy
retrieving his soccer ball in the road. Like Vietnam, every civilian,
even children, that we have come to show the light of democracy must
loom as a potential threat to individual soldiers' lives.

We have seen TV images of wounded youth without arms, legs, eyes, brain
function, getting "rehab" in Walter Reed hospital. But it makes no
sense. The people we're supposedly helping plant improvised incendiary
devices to kill and maim the helpers? How does the lethal response of
Iraqis mix with the religious credo inside the honorable souls of the
men and women who have gone there "to serve"? Not all these youngsters
were like Jessica Lynch, who enlisted "because I couldn't get a job at
Walmart?"

Mike, for example, wanted to show his father that he too could serve
like a man. But something went wrong. The film slowly amasses evidence
about Mike's death and the nature of how Iraq has altered the nature of
the soldiers. Outwardly, their voices sounded normal, replete with the
mandatory "sir" added to the end of sentences. Their erect body
postures showed their military training: toughness and poise. Americans
don't show weakness even under extreme stress.

After serving in Iraq, however, the men fall apart. Hank has not yet
grasped the significance of his son's death. He still clings to the
notion of soldiering as serving, of courage as conquering fear. It
doesn't allow him to ask the right questions about who murdered his boy
or what motives the killer might have had. But as a former military
policeman he knows how to ask, look, listen, and learn from the men in
Mike's unit. But he still doesn't show any curiosity about why the
United States with its humongous technological superiority and brave
soldiers hasn't won a real war since WWII? (Gulf War I was a
technological massacre).

Does the clue for the larger mystery lie in the film's title, "In the
Valley of Elah," the place where David transcended fear to accomplish
the unthinkable? Does this biblical story that Hank relates to the
young son of a sympathetic police detective at bedtime relate to the
meaning of courage in the Iraq War context? Is the new Goliath the war
machine itself with tens of thousands of factories and contractors 435
congressional districts that feeds the local and national economies?
Few politicians dare confront it with a weapon as simple as a stone and
slingshot: the truth?

Other than non-front runners Ron Paul, Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich,
the presidential aspirants salute the bloated military, which did not
win wars in Korea, Vietnam, where millions of Davids confronted the
technological Goliath with far cruder weapons and forced the United
States to withdraw. In Iraq and Afghanistan, the Resistance has driven
US politics into a tizzy.

By its nature, war drives people into irrational states--even after the
battles are over. Like many a grieving parent, Hank, too, begins to
lose his grip as he stops thinking like a detective and vents his anger
with racist language on a Mexican-American from Mike's unit. He
actually cuts himself while shaving. His wife (Susan Sarandon) blames
him for taking away both her sons. The other also died in military
service--and, on top of this, there's guilt. Hank substituted machismo
for compassion when Mike desperately needed him. Now the stoic,
grieving father, must fight the military bureaucrats--and police
"rules" -- to get answers. He keeps looking at the fragments of video
and the still photo as it dawns on him that the damage done to those
who served in Iraq cannot be repaired.

The chaotic fragments of jiggly cell phone video--unusual in Hollywood
films, noted for careful composition--challenge the audience
aesthetically as well as politically. How do you extract meaning from
visual and audio chaos?

"In the Valley of Elah" offers no answers, other than the Iraq war has
permanently altered US politics. Hank's innate sense of country right
or wrong and soldiers as noble erodes with the understanding of what
happened to his son and his son's killers. The facts of murder lead him
to distrust the institution with which he has identified.

Each member of Mike's unit has become a killer, drug addict, patron of
sleazy sex bars. All have become pathological liars; his own son turned
into a sadist in Iraq. "In the Valley of Elah" is about the changing
nature of American axioms--we are good, our cause is noble, to serve in
the military brings honor to the family. Like the Vietnam
veterans--alas, did we really need another lesson?--the soldiers
returning from Iraq also suffer from post-traumatic stress. Some have
committed horrible crimes.

Mike disobeyed orders after committing an unthinkable act which his
superior ordered. He stopped his vehicle, got out and photographed the
scene where he lost his soul--in the service of his country.

[Saul Landau writes a regular column for CounterPunch and
progresoweekly.com. His new Counterpunch Press book is A BUSH AND BOTOX
WORLD. His new film, WE DON'T PLAY GOLF HERE (on globalization in
Mexico) won the VIDEOFEST 2007 Award for best activist video. The event
was held in October at the Roxie Theater. The film is available through
roundworldproductions at gmail.com  ]