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Dreams of Sparrows, Back from Iraq, Sir! No Sir!

Co-Host: RiKu Matsuda, host of Morning Review Thursday Edition

Just hours before President Bush’s surprise visit to Iraq last week, the US Ambassador in Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad, sent a secret cable to Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, reporting a grim picture of Iraq. The cable was reprinted by the Washington Post, and cited women being under increasing pressure to dress “modestly,” and that “ethnic cleansing” is going on “in almost every Iraqi” province. The cable also relates how Iraqi employees returning to their homes, face sweltering neighborhoods without regular electricity, unending lines for gasoline, and families torn apart by religious and ethnic tensions. Meanwhile, one of Saddam Hussein’s chief defence lawyers was abducted, tortured and murdered yesterday. Khamis al-Obaidi is the eighth person associated with the court case to be killed.

While the mainstream media continues to focus heavily on Iraq, what’s rare is to hear the voices of Iraqis themselves talking about the US occupation and its consequences. Today we present a documentary directed by five Iraqis living in Baghdad. It’s called Dreams of Sparrows, directed by Hayder Mousa Daffar. Contributing directors include Khariya Mansour, Hayder Jabbar Fehed, Murtuda Sa’ady, and Rassim Mansour. Dreams of Sparrows offers a first hand look at post-Saddam Iraq, particularly in the arts and culture, and eventually towards the politics of occupation and resistance, concluding with the US siege of Fallujah, and the devastating death of one of the crew members. Dreams of Sparrows is dedicated to Sa’ad Fakher, killed by US troops during the production of the film.

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We turn next to Sir! No Sir! a film by David Zeiger, on the little known GI anti-war movement during the US war with Vietnam. By the Pentagon’s own estimates, there were more than half a million “incidents of desertion” between 1966 and 1971; officers were being “fragged,” that is, killed with fragmentation grenades by their own troops at an alarming rate; and by 1971 entire units were refusing to go into battle in unprecedented numbers. In the course of a few short years, over 100 underground newspapers were published by soldiers around the world; local and national antiwar GI organizations were joined by thousands; thousands more demonstrated against the war at every major base in the world in 1970 and 1971, including in Vietnam itself; stockades and federal prisons were filling up with soldiers jailed for their opposition to the war and the military. Sir! No Sir! is the first documentary to cover the GI resistance against the Vietnam war.

On Saturday July 15th, KPFK presents a benefit screening of Sir! No Sir! for our listeners at the Laemmle One Colorado Theater in Pasadena, at 11 am. David Zeiger will be present, and Sonali Kolhatkar will moderate. Tickets are only $30 a pair and available at 818-985-5735 during our fund drive.

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We turn next to another documentary that has looked at the reactions of US soliders to the current war we are fighting in Iraq. It’s called Back from Iraq: The US Soldier Speaks. The film chronicles the eyewitness accounts of four courageous U.S. Soldiers returned from their tour of duty in Iraq. They include: Joseph Mahfouz, an army mechanic forced to fight on the front lines; Patrick Resta, a National Guardsman caught between military orders and the humanitarian rights of soldiers and civilians; Jimmy Massey, a Marine Staff Sargeant and former Parris Island Trainer confronted with the stark realities of war and death; and Jeff Key, a Marine Lance Corporal guided by his southern upbringing and deep religious conviction.