The Road To Fallujah (Mark Manning, 2008): USA

Reviewed by Darryl Walden. Viewed at the Santa Barbara Film Festival 2009.

Imagine
having experienced
the beauty of
traveling south on
highway 101,
majestic mountains
on the left as if
natural sentinels for
Montecito homes,
safe beneath faultless
blue skies that play
uninterrupted reflective melodies
on Pacific waves
to the right,
in contrast to
a perilous trek north
between
Shiite and Sunni
roadside debates
that could detonate
at the slightest
provocation,
jeopardizing a mission
that began with
smuggling medical supplies,
too often too late
for severed limbs
and unheard screams
beyond bullet ridden,
blood soaked walls
and the lingering
irony
that US tax dollars
were more nobly
spent
on a campus course
teaching documentary filmmaking
than the soldiers sent,
who contributed to
the devastation witnessed on
the road to Fallujah.