Bravo Gary Sinise!

Just when you think that there's nothing good coming out of Hollywood, you find that someone out there really does care about the truth. You find someone who actually does believe that the better side of the military should have its day. That someone is actor Gary Sinise.

He has a band which has performed many times on USO tours of Iraq and Afghanistan. The group has also performed at fundraisers for military families. But better still, he has served as executive producer on a documentary, Brothers at War, which dares to present the events in Iraq and the soldiers there in a positive light. In a Hollywood which hates the military and dealing with a media which insists on emphacizing the negative, Sinise lends his support to the story of a director, Jake Rademacher, as he follows his younger brother soldiers on their tours of duty in the Middle East where they actually help people.

The media doesn't like that side of the story because it's mundane: blood and guts, and the isolated evils which may occur, sell (so they claim). Stories about the good stuff doesn't. Consequently, we are fed by the press stories of deranged soldiers and incessant firefights and not told of troops getting supplies safely to schools and hospitals and community centers. Protecting humanitarian efforts plays second fiddle to the insatiable need of big media to sell gore and evil in the name of journalism; never mind that, with a little honest effort, a fair and responsible media could, if it wanted, give us the big picture and not merely the provocative stills.

What exposure will Sinise's efforts garner? Well he made page 5F of the Detroit Free Press Sunday edition yesterday (March 15, 2009) so I guess it has a bit of notoriety attached to it. Yet not nearly enough.

I, for one, will seek out this film. I will also do what I can to promote it, starting with this tiny effort. It's the least I can do for our Brothers at War.