Scenes we’d like to see…

Hollywood can’t figure out why Flags Of Our Fathers, the new World War II movie (released just in time for the mid-term election) by former Republican mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea Clint Eastwood, is doing so poorly. (New York Times, cover of the Arts and Leisure section today.)

Hollywood can’t figure out why Americans aren’t flocking to theaters to see more war.

Hollywood is always looking for good, true stories. War stories. So how about some of these:

—Sgt. Ricky Clousing, 24, was a skateboarder and self-described “partier” from Washington state until he became a born-again Christian and went to war in Iraq, he said, to serve his country and God. But after four months on the job, he decided he was doing neither, according to a story in the New York Times. “[Clousing] said he saw American soldiers shoot and kill and unarmed Iraqi teenager, and rode in an Army Humvee that sideswiped Iraqi cars and shot and old man’s sheep for fun… He said his work as an interrogator led him to conclude that the occupation was creating a cycle of anti-American resentment in violence.” He refused to serve any longer. Sgt. Clousing is now in jail and has been denounced by the military as a coward.

—Pat Tillman gave up a multimillion-dollar contract playing defensive back for the Arizona Cardinals in order to join the Army Rangers and was sent to Afghanistan in 2002. The military said he died in combat there in 2004. Tillman was about to be canonized by the media when it was revealed that he had actually been killed by American “friendly fire.” Kevin Tillman, his brother, has now written a scathing indictment of the war in Iraq, calling it "an illegal invasion," in the online magazine Truthdig. Kevin Tillman, also a former Army Ranger, writes that "somehow, the more soldiers that die, the more legitimate the illegal invasion becomes.” Tillman also harshly criticizes the indefinite imprisonment and torture of terrorism suspects and other moves by the Bush administration since September 11. "Somehow American leadership, whose only credit is lying to its people and illegally invading a nation, has been allowed to steal the courage, virtue and honor of its soldiers on the ground," he says.

—Korey Rowe, 23, was a senior in high school in Oneonta, New York, when he was actively pursued by an Army recruiter. Three weeks after Rowe arrived in boot camp, the attacks of September 11, 2001 happened. Rowe served in Afghanistan and participated in the invastion of Iraq. In Iraq, it was his duty to guard Medical City, a hospital where he saw many Iraqi children maimed and killed in the war. In 2004, Rowe returned to the United States and produced a documentary, Loose Change, which had been written and directed by his friend Dylan Avery. Loose Change has now been seen by tens of millions of people all over the world (www.seeloosechange.com), and Rowe and Avery have become Internet folk heroes. Their movie questions the so-called official story of the 9/11 attacks and suggests that the U.S. government may have been involved. (See my interview with Rowe in Rosebud #4, below.)