Our War - BBC 3 - © Simon Panter - BBC

The first of a three part documentary based on war footage shot by soldiers themselves screened last night in the  UK .

As this BBC blog intro exclaims, it was “Stunning, extraordinary, powerful, shocking…”

While driving to and from work today, there was a particular part of the programme that played over repeatedly in my head.

It wasn’t the graphic images of wounded soldiers or IEDs exploding around them but their facial expressions, body language and words when they talked about killing the enemy that shocked me most deeply.

I’ve said before on this blog that I am anti-war not anti-soldier and the shocking aspect of this programme was illustrating how inexperienced young men (in battle and life) can be turned very quickly into crazed, ruthless killing machines.

The main subject matter of this first programme was the death of a young recruit on his first tour and the effect it had on his comrades. The Platoon, by their own admission, made mistakes and did not respond as well as they could when coming under attack – all of which contributed to the circumstances in which their colleague died.

What shocked me however was the intoxication of gaining revenge – “an eye-for-an-eye” as it was described. Although with the Platoon’s superior firepower, gaining this revenge means that in the words of one of the soldiers, when one of their own is killed, we kill 40 of them. The programme showed footage of the Platoon’s subsequent encounter with the Taliban and the absolute relish gained from having the opportunity to kill. The Platoon Commander, who through much of the programme was shown to be a thoughtful and caring young man who wrote at length to the parents of the lost recruit through a desire to make sure they knew the truth, could barely hide his deep satisfaction and gleeful relief that he was able to kill to avenge his soldier.

The programme showed that despite the danger to their own lives, the young recruits were becoming addicted to the war and longing to return to the Afghan bases to continue taking revenge for the loss of their friends. These interviews with the newly ‘war hardened’ recruits sounded almost identical to interviews with members of the Taliban seen in a Channel 4 documentary a day earlier called America’s Secret Killers which examined the US driven tactic to foreshorten the insurgency with ‘hunter-killer’ strategies aided by highly effective robot drones. Likewise, the killing of their comrades and innocent civilians emboldened them to fight on with a ferocity and determination driven by the religious ideology that they were destined for martyrdom. In their words, ‘This war has become like delicious food for us. When a day passes without fighting we get restless.’

When you watch interviews like this, the drawn out conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan look like a self-fulfilling prophecy from one of the men who was instrumental in instigating them in the first place.

Dick Cheney , the US Vice President at the outset of these 21st Century conflicts, was well publicised as saying that from his reading of history, ‘ the Natural State of Man is War ‘ . Following the discrediting of the Weapons of Mass Destruction claims and denial of ‘regime change’ as the rationale for the Iraq war, this was about the only justification the US Administration could hang its campaign on.