Generation Kill Mondays: Episode 2, "The Cradle of Civilization"—Take 1

By Keith Uhlich

It's midway through the terrific second installment of David Simon and Ed Burns' adaptation of Evan Wright's Iraq War reportage, Generation Kill, that the Marines of First Recon Battalion note they'll soon be traveling in-between the Rivers Tigris and Euphrates—through the heart, in other words, of Mesopotamia, the "cradle of civilization."

It's an observation stated genuinely, nonchalantly, but still tinged with a potent sense, if only via the subconscious, of irony. The wellspring of life is now the battleground of death, though I don't think we're meant to take this as an entirely oppositional juxtaposition. Think back to the opening of Episode One where two Marines converse in a former Kuwaiti battlefield, littered with wreckage from the first Gulf War. The meaning of the image is clear: the location in question is as much its past as it is its present. The players have changed, as have the goals (currency prevails over historicity), but the precedents continue to haunt, even as each successive generation tries to brazenly reinvent the wheel.
__________________________________________________
To read the rest of the review at UnderGroundOnline (UGO), click here.