Restrepo (2010)

First let it be said that I was raised in a military environment. My father was a soldier for 32 years and I was intensely involved in the Canadian Air Cadets from the time I was 13 until I was 20. However, I never wanted to become a soldier.

It wasn't that I didn't think it was a noble profession because I do. I have great admiration for young people who volunteer to defend their nation's values in far away and dangerous places for little pay or respect by the same governments that deploy them, often with dubious motives. We all know this from the US's involvement in both Iraq and Afghanistan.


I follow closely the mission of our own Canadian boys in Afghanistan and pray for the day when they get pulled out of that shithole despite the good they are able to do by being there. To me it's not worth the cost in lives that we are forced to bear.

Afghanistan has problems that no outside nation has been able to solve or improve for 1000 years despite the fact that each major empire from the British to the Soviets to the Americans have tried - tried and failed.


I was just never a person who enjoyed being part of the chaos that I instinctually have always known that war would bring. I don't want to kill another person and I certainly don't want him killing me. If I am going to put my life on the line I need it to be for a much nobler causes than oil. How 'lucky' the soldiers who fought in WW II were. The defeat of Hitler and his ideas seemed like my kind of 'cause'.

So when watching the new documentary RESTREPO about a company of American soldiers deployed to the dangerous Korengal Valley of Afghanistan in 2007, I was both shocked and angered by what I was seeing.


Almost immediately you feel what it is like to be in a Humvee when it hits an roadside I.E.D (improvised explosive device) and the confusion that follows such a common occurrence. Even a few days of that kind of stress and pressure would drive me off my nut and you see how living that life for 15 months changes these young men who daily see those they love and serve with die right in front of them and right in front of you.


The documentary is intense and that is because of the remarkable footage that embedded journalists Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington were able to take of their time with these remarkable young men. You are placed in the middle of the action and you see the true inhumanity that war brings to the men who fight it. How do you experience the events that these men do and not be forever changed? How do you go home and return to anything resembling a 'normal' life?

The amazing footage of life/death in the Korengal valley is interspersed with studio interviews with the soldiers who were there for the worst of it. You see the way they fight to hold back the intense emotions their memories bring up. Sometimes the smile on the outside is only to cover the tormented souls they were left with.

The cultural divide is so intense that I can never see how the two sides can ever come to an understanding. Afghanistan is trapped 500 years behind the West and you can only feel the frustration the Americans have in dealing with the local Elders. They are more concerned with payment for the death of a cow than helping fight the foreign jihadists who have brought war to their home. It's almost like being on another planet and trying to have the alien population understand why you are on their world.

Add THAT realization to everything else then try to explain to me and the soldiers who were there exactly WHY it is so important that they were sent to Afghanistan. I never quite got a satisfactory answer and that angered me.

Anyone who has any interest in the war in Afghanistan needs to see this film to fill out their level of understanding about the conflict. The documentary is decidedly and deliberately non-political and tries not to take sides. For the most part they succeed.

I know I will never forget the scenes of soldiers totally breaking down in the middle of a firefight once they realize that their buddy has just died. They were tough, battle hardened professionals and all that faded in one moment of realization of their own mortality.

Intense in the only word I have to describe the experience of watching this documentary. Take the time and educate yourself.