Only The Dead See The End Of War

The Iraq War was a disaster. A poor foreign policy decision. The United States destabilized a region that had a ripple effect that we should never forget the consequences of our actions.

There are many very good documentaries on the war. In fact, I have reviewed one many years ago about the corporatizing of the war. Recently, I found a documentary that will serve for years as an archive how the war fell apart. The documentary, Only The Dead See The End Of War is a carnal, raw view of the war's progression into chaos.

An Iraqi Time's Magazine correspondent documented the unravelling of systems that led to chaos. I literally watched in aw as a nation of hope quickly transferred into a sectarian mess. We lacked the resources and competency to keep the nation from falling into chaos. Mission Accomplished was an embarrassment as President Bush declared the war a success.

I also could not help but judge our current President for his actions. We had a responsibility to restore order, and we abandoned the country again in 2009. While this was not a part of the movie, you can make a correlation that our leaving did leave a vacuum for ISIS. We had to have known this was a possibility, considering the well documented actions of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He literally provided a blue print for ISIS to exists and prosper if the nation were to be plunged into chaos again.

This documentary is not for the faint of heart. Even with some digital protections, the movie provides a rare insight into what our veterans of the war went through from 2003-2007. While the media did cover the problems, we were protected from the raw videos you see in this documentary. If we saw these images, instead of the sanitized 30 sec clips given to us every night, I actually think we would have stayed to help keep Iraq stable. I think our government felt like we would have done the opposite.

Generations will look back at the historical archives such as this documentary, and not look very kindly on our decision to invade Iraq. We see the consequences all around us today. Every action, has a reaction, and we made a serious foreign policy mistake by invading Iraq. One last thing about this movie, the courage displayed by this journalist makes this documentary special. I am pretty confident most journalists would not have travelled the roads this journalist did to bring us the most authentic accounting of the unravelling of Iraq.