A Movie for At Least 546 To See Now

It was the sweater that I noticed first.

The man wearing it, grieving in a most painful and public way, stood beside a pile of dead bodies in a market near the center of Baghdad, the aftermath of explosions that killed 88.

I own a similar sweater. Same color, too.

I'm not desensitized to such images of violence. They really bother me. Violence in movies, which I know is fake, usually doesn't affect me, but the "real thing" is something I have a more difficult time with.

Can any thinking person not look at this without feeling a sense of horror?

The photo (and others like it, which are being created on a daily basis) has been in my head all week, since it appeared on the front page of the New York Times on Tuesday. It's really hard to forget.

I suppose all this was in the back of my mind when I wrote this, and it certainly was in the back of my mind last night, when my friends and I went to see Letters From Iwo Jimo, part II of the Eastwood masterpiece of filmmaking that started with Flags of Our Fathers, and a two-movie set that I wish every single American would see, think about, and learn from.

I don't know if it's realistic for all 300 million Americans to see, but why don't we start with 546 individuals?

Let's do the math together: That would be the 100 U.S. Senators, the 435 U.S. Representatives, the 9 members of the Supreme Court, our single Chicken Hawk vice president, and plus his boss, the former Yale cheerleader, the child of privilege who was able to skip out on his National Guard service because his daddy was a Congressman and his grandpa was a Senator.

Letters from Iwo Jima movie site.