CDR Salamander - The Last 600 Meters: PBS's 17 Year Disgrace

2004 was 21 years ago.

That is the difference from the end of WWI to 1939, the start of WWII; from the end of WWII to 1966; and from the attacks of 9/11 to 2022.

What is an example of a great documentary about one of the above? Let’s take Victory at Sea. It came out in 1952, seven years after the end of WWII. The documentary was a long series about a very broad topic with about 13 hours’ run time.

What if you were going to focus on just a battle instead of the broad sweep like VaS took and wanted to keep it inside 90 minutes? Would it take half as long, 3 or 4 years?

Imagine a documentary of WWI, WWII, or 9/11, full of primary sources from the major players, and footage not seen anywhere else, but refusing to air it because you didn’t want Woodrow Wilson, Harry Truman, or George W. Bush to be seen in a good light…no, belay that.

You did not want the Doughboys, the US Navy, and FDNY to look good. That was your reason.

I’m talking about the documentary by Michael Peck, The Last 600 Meters: The Battles of Najaf and Fallujah that was played on the USMC’s Birthday Monday on PBS, and is now streaming on Amazon Prime.

The two deadliest battles of the Iraq War occurred in 2004. The Battle of Najaf was fought in the South against the Shiite Mahdi militia. The Battle of Fallujah was fought in the West against Sunni insurgents. This film tells the story of these battles, not through narration, but through the words and deeds of those who fought there.

Peck’s documentary was ready for publication and presented to PBS in 2008, four years after the battle in question…and it was spiked…only to finally see the light of day now, 17 years later.

Why?

The American people were not given the opportunity to see and understand—and honor—their Marines for the worst reasons by the worst people.

Via David Kindy at Military Times,

“We conducted the interviews three years after the battles when memories were fresh,” Pack said in an interview. “But it was hard time to get it on the air then. Everyone had their opinions about the war and it was clouded in politics. We strove to tell these stories without politics from the point of view of the people who were there. Maybe now is a good time to look back and remember what happened.”

Further detail from David Zimmerman in The Washington Examiner,

PBS initially rejected the documentary in 2008 because of its perceived pro-military bias and lack of political commentary, even though the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was the project’s principal funder at the start. The network then began to dictate the direction of the final cut, but Pack wasn’t willing to compromise on his vision.

It was only recently that PBS President and CEO Paula Kerger decided to broadcast it upon reexamination. Pack credited her courage in reversing the company’s past decisions.

“We owe her a great debt. It’s not easy to do that, and I really appreciate her doing it,” he said. “She simply saw the film, looked at it with fresh eyes, and said, ‘We should have this on the air,’ and that was a great decision.”

17 years.

What an absolute disgrace. What a perfect example of the bias and warped nature of PBS/CPB that those of us right-of-center have complained about for years. Add this to the wall of shame.

That being said, BZ to Kerger for finally giving the green light…but so much time has passed. A few years after the battle, I served with a guy who was a company commander during the Battle of Fallujah. Perhaps now more people will know a sliver of what he did not talk about.

I missed it Monday, but will throw some change at Bezos and stream it before the end of the month.

As a side-note on the dangers of using AI: when I asked ChatGPT, it focused almost completely on what is in hindsight is a clearly misleading article in Current from 2017. It completely ignored the more recent articles from The Washington Examiner and Military Times linked to above. X’s Grok, on the other hand, focused on the most recent articles.

AI, like all media: a forest of bias if you rely on just one source.

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h/t J.

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