I don’t know a lot about the US military, but from comments on the web by people who plausibly claim to know what they’re talking about, the whole movie was just completely unrealistic - e.g., the ambush sniper scene (he can’t hit a stationary target but can get a moving target pretty easily - yeah I know, luck, or something), punching a superior officer, drinking in base, going off base in civilian clothes, every single bomb disposal scene. These are some of the things people mentioned.
Now that’s fine, a movie doesn’t have to be realistic from a factual viewpoint in order to be good - it can be just an entertaining movie. However, if fails at that too. The camera work was pretty good, and that’s about all you can say in its favor. The dialogue - corny, the story - predictable and formulaic, the message - I have no idea, even the ending was stupid. Well, that shouldn’t be surprising because the start was also very stupid. “War is a drug”? Please tell me what that is supposed to mean? Whatever it is I bet I can show you why it’s a stupid quote. If it is supposed to tell us that some people get addicted to war, then … wow, profound observation. But actually, as the movie shows, most people just want to get the fuck out of war, so really, war isn’t a drug, at least not for most people.
If the intention was to make us either indifferent or hostile to every single character in the film (and even that’s not a bad thing for a film to do, so long as there is something else to it), then it was a remarkable success.
“People who want to kill us and/or innocent people” is the opposition. Kinda vague, I know. But so is real life in Iraq. Which was kinda my point. You clearly disliked the film because it wasn’t realistic, and then you disliked it because, well, it was realistic.
Part of the point of the movie was that the protagonists (and I think there were three protagonists) weren’t sure themselves what they was thinking. It’s not a cookie cutter movie with pure, all knowing, steadfast heros bringing an end to the evil of the bad guys. If that’s not for you, fine, no problem, such is life. But I think it worked well as a movie. Again, not Oscar worthy, but still a good film.