Chapter Eight - Generation Kill (HBO 2008)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2014
Summary
On 9 September 2004, E. L. Doctorow wrote a bitter op-ed piece for the Easthampton Star. It was a denunciation of the Iraq War and its initiator George W. Bush.
I fault this president for not knowing what death is. He does not suffer the death of our 21-year-olds who wanted to be what they could be. On the eve of D-Day in 1944 General Eisenhower prayed to God for the lives of the young soldiers he knew were going to die. He knew what death was. But this president does not know what death is. He does not mourn. He doesn't understand why he should mourn…To mourn is to express regret but he regrets nothing. He does not regret that his reason for going to war was, as he knew, unsubstantiated by the facts. He does not regret that his bungled plan for the war's aftermath has made of his mission-accomplished a disaster. He does not regret that, rather than controlling terrorism, his war in Iraq has licensed it. So he never mourns for the dead and crippled youngsters who have fought this war of his choice.
For Ed Burns, who had served in Vietnam,
First of all, they're volunteers, so they're going to go where they're told to go, and it's up to the American people to be cognizant of that decision. I don't think Bush has any idea of the suffering he's caused … We don't see the coffins coming home. We're disconnected from the war. And that's wrong – we should all be in it together. If we're going to be in it, we should all be in it together, and we're not. And I think that in a larger sense, we're ashamed that we're not involved. At some level we know that it's wrong to have done this.
For David Simon, ‘everything from Iraq to Wall Street to urban policy to the drug war, I look at it all and I say, “You know, these guys really couldn't do much worse.”’
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- Viewing AmericaTwenty-First-Century Television Drama, pp. 333 - 354Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2013