On Sunday, when “Generation Kill” was making its wartime debut on HBO, nine U.S. soldiers died in real combat. The TV drama took us down the bleak road from Kuwait to Iraq. The real U.S. troops were killed in northeastern Afghanistan. Iraq, Afghanistan — what’s the difference, as long as we learn about it from the safety of our living rooms in America?

That the war is a blurry afterthought to most of us was clear the day after the killings. The morning “news” programs mentioned the slaughter, but they had bigger business to cover: arrival of Brad and Angelina’s twins.

It figures. War is such a downer, and so expensive to cover while it’s still going on. So we’re trying to understand it now by playing catch-up. That’s where “Generation Kill” comes in. It’s the latest effort from David Simon and Ed Burns, who previously brought us the bad news about Baltimore in “The Wire” and “Homicide.”

Their new series is taken from Evan Wright’s embedded reporting for “Rolling Stone” and his subsequent best-seller about the earliest days of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. At least nobody got killed in the first TV episode. In fact, the worst injury came from a portable stove that explodes and burns a guy’s cheek.

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“My Marines treated it,” a commanding officer is informed.

“You might want to consider commendations,” the commander replies.

And there you have the subversive spirit of “Generation Kill.” Not only does it give us an insider’s look at those fighting this grubby war — it explodes every cliché we’ve memorized about warriors in combat: yesterday’s, and today’s.

This isn’t John Wayne material where everybody’s either brave or dying nobly. It’s not even Stephen Ambrose’s version of combat, which felt a little too close to war as Great Adventure, the grownup version of boys lobbing imaginary grenades as they play soldiers in somebody’s back yard.

In interviews, Simon told reporters that he and Burns weren’t aiming for drama, but for “journalism.” So, even when things start exploding 20 seconds into the first episode, you need to move closer to the action to get the details.

“We barbecued them,” a marine shouts. A minute later, he’s looking down at an apparent corpse.

“How’s it feel to be dead?” the marine says.

“Sad,” the corpse replies. “So alone.”

He’s alive. “Damn,” says another marine. “I had dibs on your video camera.”

They’re still going through training maneuvers, still enjoying “killing” since nobody’s trying to kill them back.

Irony fuels everything here. The troops head into combat in falsetto chorus, singing Minnie Riperton’s “Lovin’ You.” In America, we urge school children to send letters to the troops to boost their morale. In “Generation Kill,” the marines mock the heartfelt little notes. They’d rather read “Hustler.” And they theorize that Saddam Hussein’s elite Republican Guard wouldn’t be so eager to fight if they just had better luck with the ladies.

“Take the Republican Guard,” a marine says, “and camp their asses in Vegas for a week … and this country would be no more (bleeped) up than Mexico.”

But heterosexuality’s mocked, too. Testosterone’s spilling everywhere. Some of the troops kill time by shadow boxing, like a pre-fight warm-up. One guy, with a spectacularly ripped torso, lifts weights while a few buddies take notice.

“You know,” one says, “it doesn’t make you gay if you think Rudy’s hot.”

Even race is fodder. In the old World War II movies, the melting pot cast was all white, but they were a white-guy mix: the naïve farm boy, the smart-ass city kid, one or two good-natured guys with ethnic names. Later, when Hollywood incorporated blacks into war movies, somebody had to make it part of the drama.

In “Generation Kill,” there’s a post-civil rights era sensibility. When a white guy and a brown guy start swapping invective, the nearest black guy finds the spat boring and barely looks up from the book he’s reading.

Movies about this war have not exactly done big box office business. It’s like Vietnam: It’s taking us a while to decide on a common story, a common myth, the way we did in World War II. All we know is that we don’t like it.

Simon and Burns want to strip away any myths before they take hold. One other thing: In the old war movies, the soldiers looked like men in their 30s. But this war, and “Generation Kill,” gives us a children’s crusade. These marines look like they just escaped homeroom, and now they’re ready to machine gun the playground.