"Restrepo"

Editor,

I watched "Restrepo" on Netflix after reading the article referenced below. It is a brilliant and courageous piece of work by a brilliant and courageous journalist; and his death, beyond a terrible loss for his family and friends, is a terrible loss for a nation yearning to know the truth and to understand the military involvements our government chooses to engage in in our names.

Throughout the movie again and again I thought, about the Afghan people in that valley: "These people have nothing." Yes, they have the stunning beauty of the land where they live, and they do seem to extract a livelihood from the soil. But their teeth are rotten, their homes are bare, their clothes are ragged. "Why," I asked myself again and again, "are the Americans there?"

The American military has absolute air superiority, the most modern guns, plenty of ammunition and supplies; and yet the fighters trying to expel them manage to kill a few here, wound a few there, and even kill a significant number now and then. What is the point?

It is understandable that young kids sent to fight in a hostile environment see their adversaries as bad guys. It is understandable that they want to do to their adversaries what their adversaries manage to do to their friends. But what happens with heartbreaking regularity? A jet or an attack helicopter blows up a target, kills some fighters perhaps, and kills a few women and children. The grief these victims' relatives experience is as terrible as the grief American soldiers feel when their friends are killed.

This documentary is a beautiful piece of work by a sensitive and talented journalist. I hope his intention was for me, the viewer, to understand how futile the war in Afghanistan is. After 9/11 there might have been a reason to invade. I disagreed at the time, but I respect the view of some of my friends that the Taliban's refusal to give up bin Laden was cause for war.

But Rumsfeld blew it at Tora Bora, and the war since then has alternately languished or dragged on. It is a waste. The superior firepower and technology the Americans possess is not enough to win there because it is not that kind of a war. Civilians will always be killed in air strikes, and every time that happens any hope of anything resembling "victory" recedes ever farther from what is possible.

Re: "Restrepo’ Director and a Photographer Are Killed in Libya" (8/21/2011)