America’s war veterans are among the most unappreciated members of society. Countless films and documentaries put out by Hollywood and the mainstream media fail to accurately depict their true grit and the horrors they have faced battling evil around the world.
This Memorial Day Weekend on Sirius XM Patriot channel 125, Breitbart News Editor in Chief Alexander Marlow and Executive Chairman Stephen K. Bannon spoke with award-winning documentary filmmaker and President of the Claremont Institute, Michael Pack, about his film The Last 600 Meters: The Battle for Fallujah. Bannon is also executive producer of this film, which provides a raw and realistic look at what it was like for America’s special Marine forces as they battled in Iraq.
“Their story was so compelling and not being told, so we wanted to tell it,” Pack told Breitbart News.
While the majority of documentaries focus on wounded warriors coming home from places like Haditha and Abu Gharib Prison, 600 Meters focused on the the battle stories and what these men and woman experienced there.
PBS has yet to release The Last 600 Meters due to a beheading scene, Pack said. The issue is still being disputed. Pack said the beheading was ncessary to give the audience an accurate sense of the enemy. “I’ve been making documentaries for PBS for over 30 years, and I’ve never faced so much resistance and so many roadblocks as I have with 600 Meters,” the filmmaker told Marlow and Bannon
“If you take out the evil these people combated, then these people look like super aggressive, adrenaline junkies that were not motivated by anything. But they were motivated by the desire to stop evil,” He was critical that scenes of brutal violence by the Islamist enemies are not included in more documentaries and feature films on the continuing Middle East wars.
The horror of several beheadings during the first battle of Fallujah that led the Marines to come in with massive fire power in the second battle in that region, Pack explained.
The film’s title was inspired by the distance between a Marine sniper and his target–the “last 600 meters” of a global foreign policy and national security strategy.
When asked about ISIS, Pack said their “power is unimaginable.”They have filled the vacuum that was left when President Barack Obama withdrew our troops and essentially “abandoned Iraq.”
Bannon expounded on this intensity by referring to a knife fight which took place between Marine veteran-turned Democratic Congressman Seth Moulton and one of the insurgents that is featured in the documentary. “This war was bloody and horrific,” Bannon noted, and reiterated it’s important that at least one film “actually highlights the sacrifice and the combat valor of our men and women.”
At a screening of the film for WWII veterans, the audience expressed awe in the millennial generation bravely fighting this complex and controversial war. Pack said the vets approached him to say, “I can’t believe the valor of these young guys. It’s so horrific the conditions they had to fight in.”
The veterans told Pack that we could have won in Iraq in 2008 if we had just “put the hammer down… But those things didn’t happen. They decided to ease off the enemy again.”
Pack’s films are available on ManiFoldproductions.com. He anticipates it will be released in its entirety in the coming months, likely on the PBS network.
Follow Adelle Nazarian on Twitter @AdelleNaz
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