My HeyDay: Historias de Irak

Historias de Irak

2 Comments Posted by Alex Guerrero on Sunday, October 15, 2006 at 3:11 AM.

Acabo de ver Jarhead (2005, Sam Mendes / Jake Gyllenhaal, Jamie Foxx), una gran película sobre la guerra en primera persona, que narra la historia real de Anthony Swofford durante la Primera Guerra del Golfo. Brillante. Muy recomendable.

Y sin embargo, no es el motivo de este post. Por casualidad me he tropezado luego con un email que un soldado americano en Irak envió a un viejo general retirado, y que acabó circulando por todos los inbox y despachos de Washington, según cuenta la Times Magacine. Y el contenido de esa carta es una visión superchocante y bastante realista de qué está sucediendo, todo lo que se queda fuera de los periódicos. Choca bastante leerlo,sobre todo si lo comparas con los ridículos lugares comunes de las tertulias de Francinos y Losantos esta semana escandalizándose con los 650.000 muertos en la guerra, sin salir del mantra.

Os rescato algunas líneas del email, pero si tuviera un rato, me lo leería. Es bastante entretenido y chocante meterse en la cabeza de un cabo yankee en medio del lío, que sólo piensa en volver a su casa en California con su familia:

Worse, this place just consumes you. I work 18-20-hour days, every day. [...] I can't see straight, because it's 0400 and I've been at work for 20 hours straight, somehow missing dinner again in the process. And once again I haven't written to anyone. It starts all over again four hours later. It's not really like Ground Hog Day, it's more like a level from Dante's Inferno.

Biggest Surprise — Iraqi Police [...] I estimated that insurgents would kill the first few, scaring off the rest. Well, insurgents did kill the first few, but the cops kept on coming. They continue to target the police, killing them in their homes [...], but the cops won't give up. Absolutely incredible tenacity. The insurgents know that the police are far better at finding them than we are — and they are finding them.

Most Profound Man in Iraq — an unidentified farmer in a fairly remote area who, after being asked by Marines if he had seen any foreign fighters in the area replied "Yes, you."

Bad Guys arrived [...] to kidnap the mayor of a small town. [..] As they brought the mayor out to put him in a pick-up truck to take him off to be beheaded, one of the Bad Guys put down his machine gun so that he could tie the mayor's hands. The mayor took the opportunity to pick up the machine gun and drill five of the Bad Guys. The other two ran away. [...] Like they say, you can't fight City Hall.