Page 3 of 4 FirstFirst 1234 LastLast
Results 41 to 60 of 72

Thread: Generation Kill

  1. #41
    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2007
    Location
    Florida
    Posts
    8,060

    Default No one said it was

    Quote Originally Posted by Rockbridge View Post
    And how is this IO?
    but it does impact on IO due to wide distribution.
    While I'm willing to concede that a show that inaccurately portrays soldiers...
    May not be all that inaccurate...
    ... may have some negative Public Affairs implications, what the heck does this discussion have to do with IO as a warfighting discipline?
    I think you just answered your own question.

    Besides, as Brother Dave Gardner said; "Man cannot live by bread alone, he must have peanut butter." Have another cup of coffee, it'll all work out, no benefit in being grumpy.

  2. #42
    i pwnd ur ooda loop selil's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2006
    Location
    Belly of the beast
    Posts
    2,112

    Default

    Besides the forum is Media <stop> Information <stop> and Cyber <stop> unless I'm missing something it is in the right place. Here on this thread people that were in the unit being portrayed or near the unit being portrayed have weighed in. I would really like to see Nathaniel Fick give us his account as I've read his book. But, he's off in grad school or something.

    I think about it this way. There are a few movies that have defined for the public as entertainment the horrors of war or the camaradarie. We've had threads about that before. Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now to an entire generation represent the Vietnam War as much as MASH did of the Korean War. Accurate to a fault? I doubt it. Did they give some inkling of the travesty of clean and honorable combat? Likely.

    Will Generation Kill become that media portrayal? I can say it is much better than the movie "Jarhead" which should only be watched by Marines while drunk. Comparing Generation Kill as quality to a movie like Platoon to me it is no contest Gen Kill is the winner.
    Sam Liles
    Selil Blog
    Don't forget to duck Secret Squirrel
    The scholarship of teaching and learning results in equal hatred from latte leftists and cappuccino conservatives.
    All opinions are mine and may or may not reflect those of my employer depending on the chance it might affect funding, politics, or the setting of the sun. As such these are my opinions you can get your own.

  3. #43
    Council Member Rockbridge's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2007
    Location
    Virginia
    Posts
    28

    Default Ready - Shoot - Aim

    Okay, I stand duly chastened. Guess I need to open the old sight aperture a bit.
    You can get more with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone

  4. #44
    i pwnd ur ooda loop selil's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2006
    Location
    Belly of the beast
    Posts
    2,112

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Rockbridge View Post
    Okay, I stand duly chastened. Guess I need to open the old sight aperture a bit.
    Meh. Life go's on. Beer gets drank. I've done much much much worse.
    Sam Liles
    Selil Blog
    Don't forget to duck Secret Squirrel
    The scholarship of teaching and learning results in equal hatred from latte leftists and cappuccino conservatives.
    All opinions are mine and may or may not reflect those of my employer depending on the chance it might affect funding, politics, or the setting of the sun. As such these are my opinions you can get your own.

  5. #45
    Council Member Cougfootballfan's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jul 2008
    Location
    Needs of the Army
    Posts
    10

    Default

    i just finished the book yesterday, better than i thought it was going to be. thought the writer did a pretty good job, but i wasnt there so who knows

    sounds like from all the comments the show was done quite well, ill have to find some way to get to watch it

  6. #46
    Small Wars Journal SWJED's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2005
    Location
    Largo, Florida
    Posts
    3,989

    Default

    Sam - Nate just joined John Nagl at CNAS and I believe is with John in Iraq right now for short trip.

  7. #47
    i pwnd ur ooda loop selil's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2006
    Location
    Belly of the beast
    Posts
    2,112

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by SWJED View Post
    Sam - Nate just joined John Nagl at CNAS and I believe is with John in Iraq right now for short trip.
    Two guys I'd like to meet among so many others. Problem is nobody wants to meet me!!!


    Must remember deodorant.. and manner.. I need some manners.
    Sam Liles
    Selil Blog
    Don't forget to duck Secret Squirrel
    The scholarship of teaching and learning results in equal hatred from latte leftists and cappuccino conservatives.
    All opinions are mine and may or may not reflect those of my employer depending on the chance it might affect funding, politics, or the setting of the sun. As such these are my opinions you can get your own.

  8. #48
    Council Member slapout9's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2005
    Posts
    4,818

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by selil View Post
    Two guys I'd like to meet among so many others. Problem is nobody wants to meet me!!!


    Must remember deodorant.. and manner.. I need some manners.

    Sam, I tried!!!! but Nooooo you wanted to stay at the nice moteland hang out with them Air Force guys.

  9. #49
    i pwnd ur ooda loop selil's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2006
    Location
    Belly of the beast
    Posts
    2,112

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by slapout9 View Post
    Sam, I tried!!!! but Nooooo you wanted to stay at the nice moteland hang out with them Air Force guys.
    Yeah, the nice hotel with the MEPS contract and ants... But, now I know you live there and I will be back.
    Sam Liles
    Selil Blog
    Don't forget to duck Secret Squirrel
    The scholarship of teaching and learning results in equal hatred from latte leftists and cappuccino conservatives.
    All opinions are mine and may or may not reflect those of my employer depending on the chance it might affect funding, politics, or the setting of the sun. As such these are my opinions you can get your own.

  10. #50
    i pwnd ur ooda loop selil's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2006
    Location
    Belly of the beast
    Posts
    2,112

    Default

    "Godfather" lost the battalion colors in a supply truck and wasn't relieved on the spot?
    Sam Liles
    Selil Blog
    Don't forget to duck Secret Squirrel
    The scholarship of teaching and learning results in equal hatred from latte leftists and cappuccino conservatives.
    All opinions are mine and may or may not reflect those of my employer depending on the chance it might affect funding, politics, or the setting of the sun. As such these are my opinions you can get your own.

  11. #51
    Council Member reed11b's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jul 2008
    Location
    Olympia WA
    Posts
    531

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by jkm_101_fso View Post
    Because it just doesn't happen, or it's not supposed to. PLs don't refer to their NCOs by first name. I think it's pretty unheard of...and unprofessional. Just my 2 cents. Maybe in SF units or Force Recon, it's acceptable, I wouldn't know, but for a line Infantry company, no.
    My experiance was that soldiers that had been friends before the war tended to default to first name use while in the field even though they rarely did so during training. Of course I deployed w/ NG unit so my experiance may have little to do w/ active duty soldiers.
    Reed

  12. #52
    Council Member reed11b's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jul 2008
    Location
    Olympia WA
    Posts
    531

    Default Godfather

    I was unable to decide if I liked godfather or not. Obviously he was hamming for promotion (in the T.V. Series) but he showed at least some signs of compentancy. I am not suprised by the poor leadership shown in the movie. Poor leaders has been one of my fairly constant experiances in the military, and the fairly heavy dogma of the Corp. seems like it would breed it as well. Most of my bad leader experiances could be related officers that did not know what they were doing, but were afraid to admit it. War did a fairly good job of clearing SOME of the deadwood from my battalion however. Maybe leadership Army (and Marine) wide has improved.
    Reed

  13. #53
    Council Member Cougfootballfan's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jul 2008
    Location
    Needs of the Army
    Posts
    10

    Default

    Godfather does come off as wanting to impress the General quite a bit. both the tv series and the book dont do a great job of portraying the officer side of things with the exception of LT Fick and the crazy cpts

  14. #54
    Registered User
    Join Date
    Aug 2008
    Posts
    1

    Default

    I have been watching the docu-drama with mixed feelings. I was with the Div Fwd COC during the invasion; I met Evan Wright during Phase IV in Diwaniyah; I know Craig Schwetje (Encino Man) and have spoken with him at length about Evan's story.

    THE SERIES: The HBO series almost perfectly captures the feel of the March Up. The first thing that struck me was the little pack of Skittles sitting on the dashboard of one of the HMMWVs - I think I rested about 30 packs of Skittles in exactly that same position over the course of the invasion. The detail, and the willingness of the producers to accurately re-create impenetrable Marine-specific dialogue, is both incredible and incredibly daring. Spending five minutes on the lack of LSAT for the Mk-19... less dedicated producers would have dropped that to the cutting room floor without a second thought. We've all seen enough lame Dale Dye creations to make us cringe. Whatever else one might think of HBOs Generation Kill, the Marines should at least be appreciative of this risky effort to show the little things as they really were. Evan Wright and the Marines who worked on the series also deserve kudos.

    THE DIALOGUE: The dialogue between the troops is dead-on, even the bitching about the officers. I was an enlisted machinegunner in the Gulf War and I listened to plenty of "private" troop bull#### sessions during my three tours as an officer in Iraq. It all rings true and it's obvious that Evan took good notes.

    Officers often address their enlisted Marines by their first names, especially in recon units. For better or worse, that's the way it is. Troops often believe that officers are stupid and/or don't deserve their position and they often state their case. This is not a uniquely military phenomenon; leaders are often the subject of warranted and unwarranted derision. As a fellow Marine once told me, "The higher the monkey climbs up the pole, the more you can see of his a**hole."

    THE CHARACTERS: This is definitely a point-of-view story. From a character perspective, this is an embellished work of fiction. There are no Manichean opposites like the fictionalized Nate Fick or Craig Schwetje. Nobody is that competent, moral, brilliant, or insightful day on, stay on during extended combat. Conversely, nobody could possibly be as stupid and utterly, consistently incompetent as Evan Wright’s/HBO’s Encino Man.

    I have known and worked with Craig on and off for about 14 years. We went to Basic Officer's Course (BOC/TBS) together, I served with him during one of my Iraq tours, and we ran into each other at Camp Pendleton from time to time. During one of the inter-deployment Pendleton meetings we talked about the book. He told me that Evan latched on to the biggest dirt-bags in the company and took everything they said as verbatim truth. He gave me a different version of Nate Frick, one that is inconsistent with Nate's and Evan's first person accounts.

    I can't speak accurately to either point of view - bottom line, I wasn't there with that platoon. However, I can affirm that Craig is not a dumb guy. He's had at least one successful follow-on tour in Iraq as an intelligence officer. In all the time I've known him I've never seen him walking around with a gape-mouthed grin on his face. Yes, he looks like Encino Man; we're not all pretty boys.

    As an intelligence officer leading an infantry recon company for his first go-round in combat, Craig probably made some mistakes. He may have made an ass out of himself from time to time. So have I, so has General Mattis, so has LtCol Ferrando, so has Nate Fick, and so has every other officer I have ever met.

    Whatever Craig's mistakes he probably didn't deserve the blasting he got in either the book or the series. This is not a work of distant history or fiction. Craig is still around, still serving. This will impact his personal life and his career. If he screwed up, fine, tell the story. But tell the balanced story. I'm curious to know if the HBO team interviewed Craig or tried to get his input. I can clearly state that Craig is not a moron and at least one other Marine from the unit has published a different account of the portrayed events: http://coinside.blogspot.com/2006/05...-rebuttal.html.

    I don't know "Captain America" but so far the HBO series has implicated him in at least one war crime (shooting an unarmed man in the back). Has anyone brought charges against him? If not this is a pretty nonchalant way of portraying what should be an investigated criminal act.

    I don't know Nate Fick but I've read his work and respect his intellect, writing talent, and passion. I want to hear his point of view on the series.

    EVAN WRIGHT: Evan approached me at the Division COC in Diwaniyah about a week after the end of major combat operations (mid-late April). He told me that he was trying to track a Syrian foreign fighter who had been wounded during an ambush against Fick's platoon. The Syrian was purportedly aboard one of our hospital ships. He asked me to try to get him an interview so he could tell the other side of the ambush story. I thought it sounded like a great idea and told him I'd do what I could but that he had placed a very tall order.

    I went back to work. Needless to say we were busy setting up the COC and trying to figure out our next mission. Evan barged into a clearly marked secure area of the COC and asked what progress I had made. I gently took him back outside and told him he needed to be patient. I warned him about entering a secure area. A few hours later he came back in to the same secure area. This time I yanked him outside and chewed his ass. As I was yelling at him (he could have been detained at this point - I figured a stern warning would suffice) he said, "You can't talk to an enlisted Marine that way."

    For a second I was taken aback. Was Evan a Marine? He had on Marine cammie bottoms and a green t-shirt but wore what looked like a puka shell string around his neck. "Are you an enlisted Marine, Evan?" He looked down at the ground. "Well, no." I ripped him again and sent him packing.

    I think this interaction gives some insight into depths of "embeddedness" to which Evan had sunk. Part of him actually thought that he had become a Marine. Only Evan and the guys he wrote about will ever know how much of his story is weighted towards his "fellow Marines" at the expense of objective truth.

    INACCURACIES: Portraying a story from one point of view means getting things wrong from time to time. It also means that just about everything is out of context and often more broadly inaccurate.

    For example: In the series the Marines complain that they are dropped to eating only one MRE a day because LtCol Ferrando abandoned a supply truck that carried some of their food. Anyone who was with the Division during the invasion knows that we were all down to one MRE a day because we were out-running our logistics convoys. We fell victim to an inter-war program called "Logistics Pull." Essentially, you carry what you need for a very brief period of combat and request the remainder to arrive at your position "just in time." This bean-counter program completely failed to take into account combat friction, fog of war, or high-tempo operations. Since 2003 this problem has been rectified. However, anyone watching the series who is unaware of these larger issues will come away thinking that LtCol Ferrando made a mistake that wound up starving his Marines.

    I think there are repeated instances in which this first-person perspective leaves viewers with the wrong impression. This method is authentic in that it portrays the junior Marines' point of view. It's dangerously misleading as a story-telling or historic device in that it leaves an international viewing audience with the impression that our officers are generally incompetent and that the invasion was a near fiasco.

    At the end of the day we demolished or caused the collapse of an entire national Army with what really amounted to two divisions of fast-moving troops. As General Mattis and many historians have pointed out, tempo was the key to our success. Embracing the fog of war and moving quickly meant operating in very uncertain environments. From a troop perspective this came across as "stupid," "incompetent," or "foolish." At the end of the day, however, the First Marine Division was immensely successful, achieving all objectives while suffering very few casualties. We'll see how HBO finished out the series.

    FINAL: Whatever its faults, Generation Kill is certainly generating some good discussion. I'm looking forward to hearing some feedback.

    - Ben Connable
    Last edited by Connable; 08-05-2008 at 02:26 PM. Reason: Adding name

  15. #55
    Council Member Tom Odom's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2005
    Location
    DeRidder LA
    Posts
    3,949

    Default

    FINAL: Whatever its faults, Generation Kill is certainly generating some good discussion. I'm looking forward to hearing some feedback.

    - Ben Connable
    Ben,

    You just made the entire thread worthwhile.

    Best

    Tom

    Keep posting and welcome to SWC!

  16. #56
    Council Member Cavguy's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2007
    Location
    Honolulu, Hawaii
    Posts
    1,127

    Default

    Great review and perspective. Thanks for the insight on key issues, it's what this thread has been missing. If you don't mind, head over to the "Introduce yourself" thread and give a post for the rest of us.

    Agree on the perspective of the series (enlisted centric, bottom up) and how for a viewer not immersed in the military the rants/conclusions could lead to misguided perceptions of the plan and their leadership. A constant is that whatever echelon I have worked at, the next higher level is SNAFU, and their higher is FUBAR. Whether we thought they were actively trying to get us killed depended on the situation. Of course, whenever I worked at that echelon, our/my decisions were spot on and beyond reproach. Those who have served understand this. So I too am uneasy at the impression a civilian would get from the series in this area, although it is probably the most accurate "Joe" perspective depiction of a combat unit I have seen. Like you said, the details down to the skittles on the defroster vent and the Charms in the MRE add an authenticity rarely seen on any show.

    The show still raises some serious LOW/ROE issues in my mind, but again, I don't think we're getting the whole perspective. As I stated before, I wondered how guys like "Captain America" were allowed to lead in such a unit. From the book Captain America does get relieved later but is cleared in the incident. Other things, like the supply failures, can be explained (leaving Kuwait without adequate LSAT and NVG batterieswould be one of my war stoppers - your weapon is your life). All the Marine "if you wanted supply join the army" struck me as endorsement of logistical incompetence. I was not in the invasion but in the early part (May 03) of OIF 1, so I know the shortages that were in theater once into it, but Kuwait had lots, even if you had to scrounge. Just puzzing to me that a lead unit would cross berm short of mission critical supplies.

    Another (larger) observation was that as the book stated, this unit was formed ad hoc from a different structure to perform a mission it never trained for in garrison - really a cav role (screen, recon, not armed enough for guard), so I was also perplexed that they didn't *gasp* borrow some army 19D-series doctrine and TTP's.

    Thanks again for the perspective. There's always two sides to a story.

    Niel
    Last edited by Cavguy; 08-05-2008 at 02:56 PM.
    "A Sherman can give you a very nice... edge."- Oddball, Kelly's Heroes
    Who is Cavguy?

  17. #57
    i pwnd ur ooda loop selil's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2006
    Location
    Belly of the beast
    Posts
    2,112

    Default

    Connable should our paths ever pass I owe you a beer or dozen.
    Sam Liles
    Selil Blog
    Don't forget to duck Secret Squirrel
    The scholarship of teaching and learning results in equal hatred from latte leftists and cappuccino conservatives.
    All opinions are mine and may or may not reflect those of my employer depending on the chance it might affect funding, politics, or the setting of the sun. As such these are my opinions you can get your own.

  18. #58
    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2007
    Location
    Florida
    Posts
    8,060

    Thumbs up I'm with Sam -- except I don't do

    beer but I'll provide beaucoup bourbon...

  19. #59
    Council Member Cougfootballfan's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jul 2008
    Location
    Needs of the Army
    Posts
    10

    Default

    thanks for the insight, I had a feeling that there was more to it than what the author wrote about

  20. #60
    Moderator Steve Blair's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2005
    Location
    Montana
    Posts
    3,195

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Cougfootballfan View Post
    thanks for the insight, I had a feeling that there was more to it than what the author wrote about
    There almost always is. That's one reason it's important to understand the *why* behind something written as well as the *how* and the conditions at the time.

    I took "Generation Kill" as an interesting examination of the grunt level view (granted...of a few grunts) of a particular unit during a specific time period during a campaign. Narrative is always going to be colored by the perceptions of the writer, those he chooses to focus on, and the reader. "On Bullet Away" adds to that narrative, and Connable's comments add yet another layer of detail and perspective: one that, I might add, is vital to understanding the whole.

    The important thing is to not mistake "Generation Kill" for unbiased history. It's going to be biased, and it's a *part* of history but not the entire picture. We may never get that picture, but it's important for guys like Schwetje to add their perspectives to the narrative so that we can help create a good, blended whole.

    Cav, your point about this really being a cav mission is well-taken. Maybe the Marines need to go back to some of their "horse marine" roots and borrow some doctrine. I also noticed that they didn't seem to use armor as effectively as they might have during Vietnam (in my opinion, at least...especially when compared to operations in III CTZ).
    "On the plains and mountains of the American West, the United States Army had once learned everything there was to learn about hit-and-run tactics and guerrilla warfare."
    T.R. Fehrenbach This Kind of War

Tags for this Thread

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •