The new documentary brings soldiers abroad closer to home

In a scene from The War Tapes, the new documentary about the Iraq War, a jittery digital camera is trained on a quiet, round-faced soldier wearing wire-frame glasses and combat gear, riding in the stomach of an armored Humvee barreling through the streets of Fallujah. At the prodding of a voice off camera, the soldier turns towards the screen and describes the army’s mission in this ravaged country: to bring peace, democracy, and freedom to Iraq in the hopes that the rest of the Middle East will follow. The soldier then looks out the window, barely audiblely, continues, “Then we can buy everyone in the world a puppy.”

This kind of black humor permeates The War Tapes. which screened October 6 at the Hop. The film’s premise — giving three New Hampshire National Guardsmen cameras to record their year-long deployment in Iraq—lends itself to capturing not only a soldier’s view of battle, but the raunchy, biting jabs and stories that the troops sling back and forth while on duty. The jokes are wry, often cynical; they hint at politics but never get too heavy or earnest. After all, as the soldiers let us know, fighting in Iraq is a job, complete with a daily grind, paycheck, a dress code, a dusty, barren office, and moving cubicles mounted with machine guns. Politics are for the home front, where the only improvised explosive devices are rattled carbonated drinks, “insurgent” is just a recurring media catch-all, and avoiding mortars, bullets and grenades isn’t always on everyone’s mind.

The three guardsmen at the center of The War Tapes present compelling personal stories. Like other documentaries on Iraq— Gunner Palace or Iraq in Fragments — the film refuses to take a stance on the war. Instead, the guardsmen’s stories emerge fresh and uncensored, their actions and words sometimes harsh, racist or paranoid but always remarkably honest. Complimented by director Deborah Scranton’s interviews with their friends and families, the soldiers’ footage instills in the audience a remarkably strong feeling of empathy.

At 34 years of age, Mike Moriarty is the oldest of the three soldiers. A self-described “Super-Patriot,” he claims that 9/11 hit him hard and drove him to enlist. Moriarty seems unconcerned with the shady run-up to the war or the hectic debates whirling back home. “We’re there and there is nothing you can do about it,” he says at one point, “so just shut up and support what we’re doing.” As he spends more time on camera, Moriarty’s choice to enlist begins to seem more like a personal challenge: a chance for a chronic depressant and failed fork-lift operator to turn his life in a new, meaningful direction. Forced to leave behind his wife and two kids for the war, Moriarty is certain that going to Iraq is something he just has to do.

For Zack Bazzi, the son of Lebanese parents and a fluent Arabic speaker, being a soldier has always been an ambition. A political junkie — he keeps a copy of The Nation next to his bed — Bazzi describes how, in some way, every soldier wants to see combat. “It’s like training a football player all season and never putting him in the game,” he explains. Bazzi admits, though, that he probably doesn’t want to go to Iraq. “Most guys are like me,” he says. “They’re just here because they have to do their job.”

Steve Pink, the third guardsman, echoes Bazzi’s sentiments. Soldiers need to stay calm and clear-headed to perform whatever task is asked of them. “That’s why you can’t let fear control you,” he says, “[If you do], you won’t be doing your job.” Pink, an English major (student not Brit), originally enlisted to help pay for his college tuition. In the film, his literary ambition takes the form of a poignant journal that he occasionally reads to the camera. The excerpts we hear are filled with graphic metaphors: human intestines are linked sausages, the skin of a burnt body looks like melted cheese on a pizza. Pink is intent on delivering the gritty realism of war, though the weight and intensity of the grimness naturally begin to wear on him. After returning home, he has trouble sleeping but refuses treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. He talks about the war with increasing cynicism. “It better be a war for oil,” he says sincerely, “or all those lives were lost in vain.”

Most of the film takes place in 2004, as the insurgency in Iraq is beginning to intensify. The guardsmen are stationed at a base outside Baghdad and spend most days escorting convoys of supply trucks owned by KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton. Rolling down dusty highways weaving through the desert, the soldiers scan the roads for improvised bombs or suspicious characters (seemingly any Arab man over the age of ten). The soldiers’ aggressive suspicion smells less of insensitive racial-profiling than anxious pragmatism. After a few minutes with the soldiers on patrol, it’s clear that giving the benefit of the doubt can be deadly.

There is certainly a lot of apparent racism among the troops captured on camera. It irks Bazzi that his buddies refer to the Iraqis jeeringly as “hajjis,” a term he claims is ironically an expression of respect in Arabic. He laments the fact that the troops are sent in without any knowledge of the culture. It’s easy to see how, among the soldiers, the Iraq War can breed an atmosphere of us versus them, the West versus the Arabs. We’re reminded that the loss of empathy and the spread of hate are among the most enduring and unfortunate by-products of war.

Despite it all, the soldiers in The War Tapes certainly show a surprising tenderness to the locals. Moriarty, the most explicitly bellicose of the three guardsmen, is particularly touching in his interactions with Iraqi children. But naturally, emotions and rage still run high. In a gripping scene near the end of the film, Pink describes how he felt satisfied watching a dog pick at the remains of a dead insurgent. As he describes the scene, his words becoming harsher and more frenzied, his eyes turn red and watery —he’s noticeably unnerved at what he’s saying, as if he can’t believe the cold, inhumane feelings that the war has bread in him.

Scranton does a good job of respectfully capturing these emotions, particularly in interviews with the soldiers once they’ve returned to the comforts and stress of civilian life. Like other films about Iraq, The War Tapes highlights the sharp contrast between the hectic, grueling lives of soldiers on the ground and the calmness of the home front. Scranton’s film makes one see that even though most Americans may not fully realize it, America is a nation at war, . Forcing us to invest our emotions and concerns in three likeable guardsmen suddenly gives those of us who have been fortunate enough to avoid the war an immediate stake in the fighting. By the end of the film, one thing is clear: if our three protagonists are going to be put in harm’s way, it better damn well be for a good reason.