NYT writer hits military in 'Hurt Locker' column

"The Hurt Locker" is the greatest war film since "Saving Private Ryan," and in my opinion, the best movie of 2009. Surprisingly, many film critics opposed to the Iraq war have agreed, and the movie is a lock for multiple Oscar nominations. It will be released on DVD Tuesday.

When I heard there was a lengthy, in-depth column about "The Hurt Locker" in Thursday's New York Times, I was excited to read it. But I couldn't get through the first paragraph of Manohla Dargis' article without noticing the film critic's personal biases about the war and the U.S. military shining through.

A story about men and battle and the murderous highs of violence, the film is set in the Iraq of 2004, the year that the torture photographs from Abu Ghraib were revealed to the world, the year that four American contractors were murdered in Falluja, the year that the American military death toll reached 1,000.

The fact that this Times writer would essentially label 2004 as "the year of Abu Ghraib" speaks volumes about the paper's perspective and validates critics who accused the paper of trumpeting the story repeatedly on its front pages to build opposition to the war and degrade the military. By deeming the actions of a small group of U.S. troops who have since been prosecuted for demeaning Iraqi prisoners as 2004's key event, it diminishes the many heroic accomplishments by thousands of U.S. troops during that important year, in which the U.S. transferred sovereignty back to the Iraqi government. It is also revealing that the videotaped beheading of U.S. civilian contractor Nicholas Berg by terrorists in May 2004 is not considered by the writer as an atrocity worth mentioning in the same sentence as pictures of prisoner humiliation taken at Abu Ghraib. The U.S. military is condemned, while the terrorists get a pass.

Dargis also spotlights the one-thousandth U.S. death of the Iraq war and the murders of four American contractors. It is interesting to note that the terrorist who masterminded those four brutal crimes against American civilian workers in Fallujah was apprehended by Navy SEALs who now await trial for allegedly giving him a bloody lip during his capture. Why hasn't the Times ran front page stories about the plight of these SEALs or the petitions being sent to military officials with thousands of signatures, demanding their release? In fact, a search of the Times website today reveals the paper has barely covered the story, yet has been following allegations against former employees of Blackwater, the company the four Americans murdered in Iraq worked for.

Another negative and downright bizarre dig at the military comes in a paragraph that describes a key scene in "The Hurt Locker."

As he searches the car, and particularly after he sheds the bulky protective bomb suit that makes him look like an astronaut or a snow-suited toddler, James begins to resemble the car mechanic he might have been back home. “It looks like he’s checking the oil,” Eldridge says, reminding you that war is both dirty business (and often fought by the poor) and also work.

Within the parenthesis, Dargis advances an ugly media myth about the military: that it is filled with poor grunts who have no choice but to join the Armed Forces. Countless examples, including the many stories of sacrifice you read on this blog, show that many of these brave men and women come from middle class families and feel compelled to serve their country. I also fail to understand how a fictional soldier perhaps knowing the "dirty business" of how to check a car's oil is a sign that he is poor. I know mechanics and other car-savvy folks who make a lot more money than I ever did working in the same profession as this writer.

"The Hurt Locker" is a landmark movie, and one of its strengths is that it is objective, realistic, and entirely void of stereotypes. It is unfortunate that while writing an otherwise fascinating article about the film, Dargis could not follow the film's example.