Battle for Haditha

Not sure I really want to post this, but here it is anyway.

In 2005 a small unit of American soldiers patrolling the town of Haditha north of Baghdad were attacked via a roadside bomb blown up by a 'terrorist' who detonated it with a cell phone. One soldier was killed and two seriously injured. The resulting reaction from the soldiers led to the massacre of 24 people, including many women and children.

In his retelling of this true story, British director Nick Broomfield, well known for his documentary approach, used both current and former American servicemen to create a devastatingly realistic piece of cinema. I shan't review it, as many have already. But I do want to say that this is one of the most morally complex movies I have seen. Broomfield takes us into the lives of the soldiers, the families who get massacred, the Iraq men who plant to bomb (and are paid $1000 by Al Qaeda), into the complexities where violence is the inescapable logical outcome. There is no simple black and white truth here. There rarely is in life.

The moral complexity does not overshadow the fact that this was an illegal and brutal act by the soldier. (Some of the soldiers were eventually prosecuted). But the strength of this film is that it humanises the people involved. Even the older terrorist, after planting and setting off the bomb, safely escapes back to his family. When he holds his young daughter, he shakes with regret as he wonders what he has unleashed. He is a pawn in a political game.

But then, they all are. There is no simple pathway through this environment of fear, distrust and violence. I felt angry at the soldiers, but then you see the retching behind the Humvee, the violence surrounding them, their desire to simply survive the next patrol, the latent fear that haunts them at night. Forgive the brutality, never. Understand how they acted like this, most certainly.

We yearn for a simple world where the boundaries are clear. Broomfield allows us to see behind these simplistic categories, to understand. That itself is an achievement.