Friday, March 12, 2010
Media / Film / News Bites Green Zone — Now We Know
Posted by Michael Miner on 03.12.10 at 11:25 AM
A revisionist notion that has never gotten any serious traction, no matter how fervently the children of the 1930s isolationists keep putting it on the table, is the one arguing that America entered World War II under false pretenses. The argument isn't that the attack on Pearl Harbor didn’t take place — a whopper of that magnitude would have to await the historic breakthroughs in human credulity that have given us a staged moon landing and 9/11 as an American plot. It's that — or so they keep insisting — FDR knew about the attack in advance and kept his mouth shut because he wanted us in the war.
Most of us don’t want to think that. And as our minds roll back to Hitler, and the Holocaust, and the rape of Nanking, the idea feels both unlikely and irrelevant. It’s hard to think of the generation of Americans now well into its twilight as both the Greatest Generation and a bunch of patsies.
I’m writing this because I’ve just read Roger Ebert’s review of Green Zone, which he calls “one more element in the new narrative that has gradually emerged about Iraq, the dawning realization that we went to war under false pretenses.” I’m not sure that realization is just now dawning; to a lot of people the idea of hidden weapons of mass destruction seemed shaky at the time, both as a fact on the ground and as a justification for the invasion. Some of us who weren’t outraged by the invasion thought Tony Blair was making a far better case for it than George W. Bush was; Saddam Hussein was the sort of sadistically brutal, totally untrustworthy, aggrandizing tyrant who poisons not only a country but a region, and who must be removed if that region is ever to function in a way approximating normality. The USA has a history — and perhaps we should be proud we're so pacific — of letting such tyrants be, even doing business with them. Unless they’re communists, or attack us first. Bush really had to strain to implicate Saddam in the 9/11 attacks, but as he strained he winked — though that was probably just my imagination. Where Bush lost a lot of us wasn’t in going into Iraq; it was doing it in such a half-assed way: like a drunk frat pledge sneaking into the dean’s office, he had no idea what to do next once he got there.
How important are pretexts to the wars fought in response to them? There’s always some incident, some insult, some intolerability that lights the kindling. American went into Vietnam with both feet after the North Vietnamese attacked two of our destroyers in what’s remembered as the Tonkin Gulf incident. But the second attack — the one that saw America leap to its feet sputtering “That’s it; we’ve had enough!” — never happened. The destroyer Turner Joy was not attacked for hours on end by North Vietnamese torpedo boats; in rough weather, the destroyer’s radar operators were misreading the blips on their radar. No one knew this with more clarity than James Bond Stockdale, who was overhead in an F-8 with orders to blow the nonexistent torpedo boats out of the water. He’d eventually receive the Medal of Honor for his valor as a POW. He attempted suicide, preferring death to what he saw as the likely alternative, which was continuing to be tortured until he eventually buckled under and revealed that he knew America was in the war under a false pretext. Stockdale had no desire in be exploited for propaganda; he was in the war with both feet himself, however it began.
Wars aren’t about the reasons they began. World War I wasn’t fought to avenge a dead archduke. If Green Zone wishes to be about the pretense that got us mired in Iraq, that’s fine, that’s its business. But I’m glad Ebert gives it four stars because it succeeds as a thriller, not as a revelation. It’s easy to overestimate revelations, both as to the extent they tell what we didn’t already know and as to the extent we care.
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This succeeds as a thriller? The main premise, if one can even call it that, concerns a supposed "top Saddam general" who believes that by telling the USA there aren't any WMD's, that the evidence will be taken and communicated, but that he will be a part of "the new Iraq" when Saddam is taken out? Hold on, does that make any sense?
Of course not. Under this film's idiotic, illogical underpinning, is the idea this general would have had to have said exactly the opposite. Otherwise, why in the name of Tigris would he have expected them to act on what he said? Did I miss a Michael Moore writing credit in there somewhere? He's usually the king of "doesn't add up."
The plot is moronic, with a top state department official ordering the murder of a U.S. soldier (Damon) and probably one of the most unintentionally humorous scenes in cinematic film history - a murdering former top general to Saddam, running like a rabbit being chased by dogs, with the hopes we'll be sympathetic to someone who had previously ordered the slaughter through gassing and torture of civilians in his own country. Of course, we're not reminded of that fact, but people were actually laughing out loud and making audbile comments in the theatre. One person behind me muttered, "Oh no, don't hurt Saddam's murder general."
Action? Thriller? It's so full of simplistic dialogue and silly, redundant plot points, a relief does come - much like a half-burp after too many soy burgers - when the few, tiny jeep chases or third rate explosions/stunts interrupt the droning on about the swiss cheese conspiracy theory being propounded over and over (yawn).
No matter your grasp of reality (which this film has little of) or your political leanings (war is good, war is bad), when you see this, you'll wish you hadn't wasted your money. I got lucky in this regard - I told the manager the film sucked and he gave me a coupon...said he'd already had a dozen requests. When I asked what the main complaint was, he shook his head and said, "Well, let me put it this way. I saw it. I'm a liberal, and EVEN I DIDN'T BELIEVE IT!"
Well, I'm a moderate, but after watching this poorly constructed, strangely cast (Greg Kinnear - in a poorly written, poorly acted, poorly-thought out mirror of Oliver Stone's Lyndon Johnson in "JFK" saying he would back the murder of his own President) crock-u-drama, all I can say is, Little Miss Sunshine this film isn't!
Hey, at least Roger Ebert liked it and he never, ever, lets his political views or his wife's attempt to purchase part of a casino - get in the way of his standards. Oops, that wasn't me writing it, that was someone projecting more reasonless pap from this film.
"Wars aren’t about the reasons they began."
To the degree that this statement is true, it is pointless.
To the degree that this statement is meaningful, it is false.
"Wars aren't about the reasons they began."
This is the kind of maddening, know-it-all statement that absolutely kills any constructive discussion. The implication is that the rest of us out here--clueless clods the we all are--had better wise up and accept the fact that we have no power or influence and stop believing that we should or trying to do anything about it, because--clueless clods that we all are--we'll screw things up even more.
This is absolutely standard, Anglo-American right-wing tripe. Leave it to the boffins.
