![]() ![]() Perhaps it’s because we know that the action we see on screen was based on real events, and that the people we watch die represent real individuals. The Long Road Home, while obviously a dramatization, looks and feels inherently different. We’ve seen it shed by the bucketful in Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead, and by the ludicrous vatful in American Horror Story.īut however involved we may become in those shows’ characters, and however realistic the directors try to make the carnage look, we know that what we’re watching is fiction. Listen, the television landscape has no shortage of blood. It’s been called “ brutal,” “ authentic” and “ unflinching.” But even as secular reviewers suggest that all that realism helps make this series a must-see television event, it paradoxically makes it that much harder to watch, too. The Long Road Home has already earned a great deal of praise, in part for its realism. ‘There’s No Glory out There … Just Death and Rot’ Which makes it all the harder when that flesh begins to bleed. Each character we see-most or all of whom appear to have a real-life counterpart-feels real and fully fleshed out for us. Shane Aguero, who led his small unit into the initial ambush to Jassim Al-Lani, the Iraqi translator who may, or may not, be working with the enemy. Every episode is told, more or less, from the perspective of one of the men or women involved in the effort: from Lt. ![]() Now he must lead a battle against a rebellion he never suspected was brewing-and save as many lives as he can.īut Volesky’s not the star of the show. A man of deep faith, he plotted the (apparently) unsuccessful efforts to win the hearts and minds of the people there. The fight around the region lasted, in some respects, for years afterward.īut the series does something that no news broadcast or Twitter update can effectively do: It gives us a view from the ground, and from home, of some of the most challenging circumstances imaginable. Countless Iraqis died April 4, too, and it was only the beginning. Eight Americans died that day (dozens more were injured), when a previously peaceful city erupted in violence. The Long Road Home is based on the bestselling book by ABC News correspondent Martha Raddatz, and it chronicles in sometimes brutal detail the events in Sadr City on and around April 4. National Geographic’s ambitious new miniseries is already spoiled: We know what happened. In Sadr City, Iraq, the date came to be known by another name: Black Sunday. … People are going to see amazing things from us here.”Īnd so Volesky still believed April 4, 2004-Palm Sunday back in the states. “Every time we do something good here, it’s a beat of that drum. ![]() “All we can do is lead by example,” he tells one of his troops. But to Volesky’s way of thinking, the only way to combat that is by making Sadr City more livable, day after day after day. Sometimes, imams rail against the Americans in their Friday sermons. Sure, not everyone’s happy with the work they’re doing here. To help the people there stand on their own and to leave behind a better place than when they arrived. He and his men are there to keep the peace. Gary Volesky, there’s no question about what he’s there to do, no ambiguity. To some Iraqis, these American liberators looked more like conquerors-oppressors here to take their oil, insult their religion and rob them of their newfound independence.īut for Lt. He’d been gone for almost a year by then, yet the American army was still here-rumbling through the streets in its armored vehicles, rousting civilians and generally disrupting any possibility of anything returning to normal. Yes, the Americans had helped free the country from Saddam Hussein’s tyrany. ![]() Not everyone in Sadr City, Iraq, believed that in the spring of 2004. ![]()
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