User Reviews

Carol Dysinger's film Camp Victory, Afghanistan – which had its World Premiere at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin, TX – provides a fascinating look inside the U.S. war in Afghanistan. Dysinger embedded with the American military for 3 years in order to capture their war effort over an extended period of time. She was there so long that she outlasted the American National Guard units which were only on 1-year rotations. This approach allowed her to build trust and on-going relationships with both the American and Afghan leadership so that she could film their internal conversations and document their efforts over an extended period of time. This film shows what few others have: The American effort to train a rag-tag Afghan Army.

This film brings home how difficult that is when the Afghan soldiers are mostly illiterate, poorly compensated, unfamiliar with democratic government, and used to corruption. We often hear the work of soldiers described as heroic, but the effort by these soldiers to mentor a war-torn country and Army that we see here truly is just that. Dysinger's effort to bring this mostly untold story home to the American people who really haven't seen this story is also heroic. The story of our efforts to build an Army in one of the most isolated corners of the world and revive a failed state needs to be told and I hope Camp Victory gains a wider audience so that Americans can gain a better understanding of the real human beings behind this often misunderstood and distant war. Unfortunately, this type of realistic war story rarely has a simple or happy ending.

After watched this documentary, I was deeply depressed about the future of Afghanistan. It seems that all the trying to help this country by the western world was just a total waste of money, time and lives. There's no hope to continue doing it.

Funny thing is while the Muslims emphasize their faith and loyalty in Koran, they are also so easily to be corrupted and to become cowards when facing money and bullets. There's no way to rebuild this country, because it's already so rotten deep down from their root. What we got after billions after billions of dollars and numerous American lives were wasted on that land? Nothing, absolutely nothing. Now all the American politicians can only find an excuse to bail out by saying their military forces are now strong enough to take care of their own country, and you know it, I know it that's just a crap we dumped before raising our asses from the Afghan toilet bowl and trying to scramble back in one piece before it's too late. A typical and traditional farce that America always did to itself since Korean War. The futile endeavor continued to repeat in Vietnam, now Iraq and Afghanistan.

Those wars and battles we got ourselves involved only profited the high ranking military guys, putting one or two more stars on their epaulets and more money to their pensions, humongous windfalls and profits to the bank accounts of those weaponry manufacturers, more bribery in different forms that in America we call lobbying and campaign funds donations to those self-serving senators and congress members.

The burden of the losses are for the common American citizens to bear, gazillions deficits and debts, more taxes, cut spending and funding on education, infra-structure rebuild, ridiculous cost of healthy insurance and other if-you-don't-insure-you're-dead insurance coverage. If you don't have money, you go to hell.

America has already become a Police Nation, the police forces are now only concentrating and focusing on the freeways to issue tickets to benefit their overtime pays and benefits, the states, the counties and even the cities. "To Protect and Serve" to the American people in need was replaced with "To Prosecute and Harass" long long time ago. Trying to meet the issuing traffic violation tickets quota has been the #1 duty of our police forces in America, because all the dental insurance and other coverages for the police families are rely on how much fines you could rip off from the driving citizens. A 911 called ambulance carrying patient to a hospital one city block away would cost the patient family almost $2,000 dollars. Insurers over 60, their premiums will keep increasing every six months and it's definitely not an age discrimination issue, because the insurance company like Blue Cross needs to be insured themselves first.

What a greedy and heartless country that America has become? And you're still so shamelessly to claim that America worries about the safety of Iraqi and Afghan people?!

Why a country that couldn't take care of their own people would become so interested in meddling with other countries' future and their people? You tell me.