Severe Clear

Last week, at the request of my friend Charlie, I watched the documentary Severe Clear which used a Marine lieutenant’s video footage of the invasion of Iraq in 2003 to reveal some of the ground-level realities of war.

The documentary blends Lieutenant Mike Scotti’s footage with what I presume is some news footage and audio reports of the war in progress, along with a few helpful (if somewhat vague) maps of the 1st Marine Division’s advance on Baghdad to tell the complete story. I assume, like most people in war, Scotti did not have the complete big picture of what was going on, which may have been a necessary component of the documentary. Personally, I think it would have been more interesting to record the actual (and notorious) “fog of war” from that ground level: see what rumors were floating around, how the troops reacted to the rumors, see how they sifted good word from, well, “bum scoop.”

The part that resonated for me the most was the opening with the Marines preparing for the invasion. A lot of it was almost achingly familiar. As Max Uriarte, artist on “Terminal Lance” said recently, I don’t miss the Corps, but I do miss Marines. And these guys were Marines through and through. If, watching it, you felt that is wasn’t representative or something, or it put Marines in a negative light, well… I’ve got news for you. That’s how they are. How we were.

The rest of it was interesting if slightly academic. I hadn’t been in on the invasion (though my unit at one time had been slated to come in on the ground through Turkey in 2003), so a lot of it was new to me… and not new to me. I think the way Scotti’s enthusiasm for the war evolved and waned resonates. I think that’s how it went for a lot of the guys on the ground, especially the Marines. But, all of them I think were ready to go home when it was all said and done, and not just because of the stress of the invasion itself, but because of a sort of letdown that came with the general failure of at least one of, if not many of, the stated missions: the failure to find the WMD that so many people seem convinced was there.

One other part that resonated was the day-of-invasion speech given by President Bush. I remember it very well, because I had, for a long time after the invasion, a sort of rotating argument with people who believed that the Bush Administration believed the war would be quick, clean, and easy. But in the invasion day speech, Bush pretty clearly points out (as I recall so vividly from watching it live) that it could be a long, hard war, and that the initial invasion and ouster of Saddam would only be the beginning of the work. Now, that being said, I think it’s also a valid criticism of the Bush Administration that, while they may have said that up front, there was a fairly woeful lack of planning on the back end to back it up. Unfortunately, I don’t think the documentary really addresses that, but… I don’t think it was meant to.

So, in all, it’s worth watching. There are some moments that might be tough to stomach. Definitely some on-camera, real-life gore, so if that’s a problem, you should avoid it. It wasn’t very “triggery” for me… but then, I was kind of in a different war. It’s funny how much that’s true, but… they only had begun to taste the insurgency. Most of their fight was direct and generally obvious. They fought against massed troops and open combatants. We fought a different war, against … well… anybody. That might be the final line on that movie: it’s a good example of the sort of war we had always trained for, always expected to fight. A war against another force, against uniformed troops with military equipment, organized and disciplined. What we fought starting in 2004, really, was something completely different, something the Corps had not really done in 80 years or so.

Mirrored from Bum Scoop.