A war without justification leaves only tragedy

Jung Hyun-mok
The author is a senior culture reporter at the JoongAng Ilbo.

A number of worthwhile films have appeared in theaters this summer, though many struggled to find audiences amid the craze surrounding “The Odyssey” (2026).

One is the war film “Warfare” (2025), released in Korea on Aug. 19. Set in Ramadi, Iraq, in 2006, it follows a platoon of U.S. Navy SEALs that seizes the second floor of a house at night and uses it as an observation and sniper post. When an Iraqi insurgent's grenade wounds several men, the platoon calls nearby units for help, but they, too, are under pressure.

The SEALs finally reach an armored vehicle, only for an improvised explosive device to detonate as they are about to board, causing more casualties and trapping them inside the house again.

The wounded scream for morphine as their pain becomes unbearable, while the insurgents intensify their attack.

The film was co-directed by Alex Garland, the director of “Civil War” (2024), and Ray Mendoza, who took part in the actual battle in Ramadi. It feels less like a conventional drama than a documentary reconstruction of those hellish hours. There are no heroes and no dramatic reversals. Instead, it depicts the horrors of combat through raw, bloody suffering. Gunfire, radio chatter, ragged breathing and screams thrust viewers into the middle of the battlefield.

Garland and Mendoza refuse the grammar of the war genre. The soldiers are not presented as warriors whose courage supplies the story with meaning. Their training and discipline matter, but once the operation begins to collapse, what dominates the screen is confusion: Men trying to understand where the next attack will come from, how badly their comrades are hurt and whether help can reach them in time. The film’s realism makes the violence difficult to distance oneself from.

That approach also changes how the Iraqi civilians are seen. They are not scenery surrounding an U.S. combat mission. They are people whose home has become a battlefield through no choice of their own. Their terror runs parallel to the soldiers’ fear, but their helplessness is greater. The question “Why?” therefore reaches beyond the immediate actions of the SEALs. It asks what brought armed men into this family’s home and what political decisions placed everyone there.

The question carries force because the Iraq War was launched after the United States argued that Saddam Hussein’s government possessed weapons of mass destruction. Subsequent investigations found no stockpiles of the kind cited before the invasion. For the civilians and soldiers caught in the fighting, however, that discovery came far too late.

The film also devotes considerable attention to the tragedy of two Iraqi families trapped in cramped rooms, trembling in terror. As the intruders wreck their home and flee, the families cry out, “Why, why, why?” The soldiers have no answer.

That brief line is the directors’ weighty question to the world. Why are young soldiers dying thousands of miles from home? Who is responsible for the terrible scars left on civilians? What, ultimately, justifies this war?

As later investigations established, the central prewar claims about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction proved unfounded. The stockpiles cited as a key justification for the invasion were not found.

Wars whose purposes become increasingly difficult to explain are still unfolding in the Middle East. In the war with Iran, even the original reasons for fighting are fading from public consciousness, while civilian casualties mount and the conflict casts a shadow over the global economy.

I still hear the agonized groans of the wounded soldiers in “Warfare” and the cries of civilians who lost their home overnight.

In Korea, opposition has grown to the possible deployment of military forces to the Strait of Hormuz. One slogan stands out: “Young lives are not bargaining chips.”

Mendoza’s purpose in co-directing “Warfare” was not far removed from that sentiment. He said he wanted decision-makers who start wars to remember that it is primarily young Americans who answer that terrible call.