Watching The War Tapes

Iraq veterans share their thoughts on the documentary and its audience.

by Jared Goyette

Of the film's soldiers, Bazzi is the most openly political. At one point the camera shows a close-up of a copy of The Nation he kept with his military gear. "Not a pro-Bush magazine, but who is nowadays?" he said. As a Lebanese American, he was the only soldier in his unit who could speak Arabic, and several scenes showed him in conversation with Iraqi children.

In the Q&A session following the film, Bazzi did not hesitate to tackle the overwhelmingly anti-war crowd's thorniest questions. Serious stares followed Bazzi as he painted a complex and gloomy picture of the Iraq he knew.

He was harshly critical of the Defense Department's tactics, citing the lack of necessary troops to provide security, missing body armor and the inability of the Army to adjust to the conditions of occupation and counter-insurgency. But even though he was not wearing his uniform, Bazzi can be still be called back to active duty at any time, and was reluctant to directly criticize his commander-in-chief. While he fears the consequences of any immediate pullout, he thinks the U.S. should be doing more to help veterans. With each question, soap-box theatrics and blogger-like rants were carefully avoided, but not for long.

"I want to address my question to you and to the rest of the crowd," a gray-haired woman said. Any doubts about her intentions were eliminated by the yellow pin fixed to her floral-patterned shirt: "The Granny Peace Brigade," the same group that invaded a Broad Street recruiting station in July [Cover, "Unusual Suspects," Brian Hickey, July 6, 2006].

"I just want you to know that I'm glad you're here with all your limbs intact," she told Bazzi as she stood up from the front row and laid her hand on his arm.

Turning toward the crowd, she began to speak. She was a teacher and couldn't understand why the U.S. government "made war on other countries" for oil while there was not enough funding for education. She continued for longer than any previous questioner, but at no point addressed either what had appeared in the film or what Bazzi had said that evening. She finished not with a question but a command: "Respond."

"Well ma'am, America is a diverse country where we all have the right to an opinion," Bazzi said. "As patriots, we should be suspicious of our government ... With that in mind, I am just going to just let your comment stand."

Bazzi had proven himself to be a diplomat as well as a soldier, but to my left, another veteran was fuming. I first met Andrew Colket in high school where we were both aggressive underachievers. After graduation, I went to South America while he found the National Guard. On the day Congress passed the resolution authorizing force in Iraq, he was worried about being sent off while I was busy being arrested with a bunch of students for refusing to leave U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum's Philadelphia offices.

Colket and I didn't agree about Iraq or much else politically, but were still good friends. After the movie, he let me know what had upset him about the peace-mongering grandmother.

"When you come back from the war, you meet a lot of people on both sides who just want to use your story to fuel their own political agenda," Colket said, "but they don't want to hear what you have to say, they're just deaf. I'm sure she had that statement prepared from the beginning. I mean look, she had in front of her someone who'd been to Iraq and seen it for himself. Did she have a question, something that she wanted to understand? No. She just used the forum for herself."

A few hours later Colket, Bazzi and I went to a local bar. Bazzi and Colket exchanged beer-fueled war stories the way only veterans can. One had voted for Bush, the other hadn't, but none of that mattered now — both had seen combat and shared a common bond.

Toward the end of The War Tapes, there was a scene showing the return of Bazzi's National Guard unit to their home in New Hampshire. Colket recalled it hours later.

"Look at everything they had — the police, fireman, ambulances, the whole community was out there," he said. "You are always going to have military families there to greet their loved ones, but the community support has started to drop for troops coming home now. People just forget."

(jared_goyette@citypaper.net)