Tonight at 9pm ET/PT the National Geographic Channel will be showing Restrepo - the amazing Sebastian Junger/Tim Carrington film that my friend Kanani helped promote to the military community.
It's flatly an amazing film. For me, it was a window into my son's life - one that neither my wife nor BG's mom has yet shared.
We don't have TV here, but we'll get a DVD and do a showing for the family soon.
But you can - and should - watch it and be reminded that while our leaders dance in the marbled halls of Washington, young men (and women) are fighting a brutal war on our behalf half a world away.
Or just buy the DVD...
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Watched the film tonight: a rare and intimate look at our young men placed into a remote and hostile world. There's no mystery why the army abandoned the Korengal valley earlier this year. The more difficult question is why were they there in the first place? There is mention of securing the area for a road project, but we don't see it, and the locals don't seem to want it. Was there a road project? If there was, it seems unlikely that there still is. In any event, the outpost at Restrepo does not appear related.
Our presence in the valley, it's clear, did not win hearts and minds. Not with the villagers, and not with the invisible Taliban (?)fighters. I trust that Centcom saw something more strategic than is visible from this soldier's eyeview . . . but the film makes you wonder.
Definitely better to watch with BG home safe and sound. I hope he was spared the brunt of the after effects of traumatic stress that is on view with the Restrepo platoon.