Rudy Reyes of "Generation Kill" part 2

The second of a two-part series.

Real-life action star Rudy Reyes from the best-selling book and HBO series Generation Kill talks to us about his experience as a soldier in Iraq and the difficulties of becoming an actor.

Why did you join the Marines?

I thought it would be the next expression of the warrior mindset. Naively speaking, at the time, I remember I was younger and I thought I could fight for those who couldn't fight for themselves. At the time, if you recall, there was a war going on in Croatia. There was ethnic cleansing of the Muslims there. And I knew people were being murdered. I knew there were snipers killing women and children and the word, politically, was that [the U.S. was] going there to fight. So I joined, because there had been reports and I had seen documentary footage of children who were killed and many children who were left alone after their parents were murdered, and there was no one there to care for them. So I wanted to sign up because I thought we were going to go there and fight [for them].

You've said you didn't feel you were making a difference in Iraq. Why?

Well, you know, I was one of the very first ones in 2001 to Afghanistan and Pakistan. I was one of the very first ones to invade Iraq in 2003. Then I went back again in 2004 and 2005, so I've seen the war on terror develop over three of four years. And, by the time I left Iraq the last time, by the time I left for my final tour, everything was coming apart at the seams in the area I was in. I was in Fallujah and Ramadi and we were doing a lot of damage to the countryside and to the infrastructure – and to the enemy – but we were losing their hearts and minds.

We were ill-equipped to police and provide security – remember, I'm not a policeman, I'm a freakin' shock troop. And I saw women, children and elderly men suffering. One family in particular had given me their home and protected me at night while I used a water tower of theirs for sniper position. They were finally found out by some faction and their home was bombed. The water tower was destroyed. It destroyed the water [supply] for the entire village. It also destroyed their electricity. When I made a patrol to their residence to help them, I was told to stand down and return to base because, quite frankly, we didn't have anything in position to help them with. You start seeing the cracks through everything. So I wasn't making a difference for the better anymore, if anything, I was just protecting the status quo.

The difference I was made – being as violent, creative, intelligent and aggressive as possible – was that I was able to bring back my men alive, because not everybody did that. Outside of that, I didn't do anything for Iraq. It's not something you can walk away from when you look in the mirror.

What did you learn while you were there?

There was no such thing as democracy, those elections and all that, they're just P.R. movements. A lot of people don't know that there are tens of different tribes just in one city, much less in the country. There are different subsets of the Muslim religion. Each fiefdom is based upon a mosque or a sheik. These people have been living in their clans for thousands of years, and only in the last 80 years has "Iraq" existed as a country. After WWI, the English arbitrarily drew it up because they were going to use it as a territory in which they could leverage the Middle East and trade. So in a sense, these different villages and tribes and clans have been smashed together and are supposedly "Iraqi." Well, they don't see it like that. So they don't just get along so easily. They're not just one people. And we didn't know that. We didn't know how deeply divided some of their political, economic and religious lines were when we went in there.

Now, we're just trying to do damage control and keep the thing from completely falling apart so eventually we can get out of there.

Why do you think the U.S. invaded Iraq?

In my opinion, we've always been in Iraq – from day one – to gain control and leverage the region in relations to energy. In relations to the business of energy worldwide. Leveraging the oil business and energy business worldwide for American interests and American business partners.

When I say this, I'm not talking about Americans like myself. Guess what kind of ties I have to oil and big business? Zero. So don't misunderstand that's it's all Americans. The [U.S.] is there to leverage and control the region for energy business, construction business and security business. For American big business and their partners, that's what we're there for.

Our higher ups just imagined that the Iraqis would embrace democracy and embrace everything and then turn right over and in a sense, become kind of like Puerto Rico for us. But it didn't work out that way because we didn't fully understand the culture. We didn't understand it and we're paying for it now.

Was it easy to play yourself in the HBO series Generation Kill?

It's kind of hard, man, even if you're playing yourself. Because guess what happens when that camera comes on? You get self conscious, you don't know if you have mocos coming out of your nose, you're trying to remember your dialogue and make it sound natural. So, no, it's still challenging. What I learned to do is become an actor out there. I was out there for seven months and I learned how to do it.

In my opinion, every actor or actress... the best ones are themselves. No matter what character they're playing, it's the intangibles of the individual's experience that comes through: the dialogue, the eye connection, the action. The masters of the craft are themselves, but most people in the business think they gotta put on devices and make up things and somehow "act." Well, the real acting is when you pull away all those barriers, and that's the hard stuff. That same kind of vulnerability reminded me very much of fighting, where you're able to win it all or lose it all right there, right then.

What do you hope people will take away after watching "Generation Kill"?

Iraq is a very dynamic and confusing place. There is no right and wrong and there is no good guy and bad guy. What it is... is young men doing their best to fight hard to protect their unit, to protect themselves and somehow come home alive. You can't deal with the horrors of combat if you don't first kill everybody you have to, until you survive combat. It's a lot harder to deal with the horrors of combat in the aftermath if you live, because you know what, you don't have to deal with anything if you die. Anybody who criticizes the United States Marine Corps. and recon Marines for being too violent and being so aggressive – well that's what we have to do.

What I want people to take away from Generation Kill is for people to say, "OK, these guys are smart young men who are the best of America's Marine Corps, but they are in an impossible mission." They are to be storm troopers, reapers and cut their way all the way through Iraq but at the same time be humanitarians. And be gentle with civilians. It's almost impossible.

In my heart, I've always been more gentle than I have been hard. No matter how tough my background was as a kid, I never quite became hard. And I used to think that was a weakness in me, but I realized it was my biggest strength.