Film Review | The Unknown Known

The Madness of King Don

by Thomas Delapa

 

AlterNet, April 5, 2014   

 

 

 

 

So what do we know now that we didn’t after documentarian Errol Morris’ 100-minute Q&A with Donald “I Don’t Do Quagmires” Rumsfeld in “ The Unknown Known”? Only that the former U.S. secretary of defense is still a master strategist of evasion, contradiction, misdirection and malapropism.

As a footnote, here’s what we do know to date about that dirty little Iraq War that “Rummy,” the George W. Bush White House and their nincompoop Pentagon neo-cons cooked up and spoon fed to the omnivorous American public: more than  4400 U.S. military deaths and 32,000 wounded, at least  100,000 to as many as 500,000 Iraqi fatalities, millions more displaced, and an estimated price tag of  $3 trillion, give or take a few hundred billion. 

Yet like most of the questions that Morris tosses—gently—at his subject, any such factual horrors are sidestepped, parried and danced around by a fitfully nimble Rumsfeld. Relaxed, nattily dressed and imperiously self-assured as ever, Morris’ hollow yet overstuffed man does his imitation of “Hogan’s Heroes” Sgt. Schultz (“I know nothing, nothing”) while implausibly denying personal culpability for any stink that blew back from the Iraq War, whether the phony Weapons of Mass Destruction raison d’être, prisoner torture or the fictitious links between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks. 

In his Oscar-winning “ The Fog of War,” Morris at least got Lyndon Johnson-era Defense Secretary Robert McNamara to shoulder some of the blame for the Vietnam War quagmire. But Rumsfeld is impishly unapologetic, even as his own words are shot down by Morris’ juxtapositions with TV news footage culled from the run-up and catastrophic letdown to the 2003 Iraq invasion and subsequent U.S. occupation. Yet it’s clear that Morris’ mission isn’t to catch his subject in a Captain Queeg-style meltdown that would cause Rummy to shout “Good gracious” or “Henny-penny” and storm off the set. 

Rather, Morris is chiefly interested in the infernal meta-narrative of how those in the pinnacles of power can delude themselves for so long and so often that—perhaps—they don’t even know what the truth is anymore. This is a man seemingly without an ounce of introspection and one who surely sleeps well at night, confident he did all the right things, from his time as the youngest (44) secretary of defense, during the Gerald Ford presidency, to his Freddy Krueger-like return to the Pentagon as prime architect of the shock-and-awe Iraq and Afghanistan U.S.-led invasions.

Morris goes out of his way to humanize Rumsfeld, including humdrum details of his marriage while tracing his long career as Republican White House insider and go-to warhorse who trumpeted “peace through strength” and other hawkish mantras. We hear Morris’ off-camera questions, but the slippery answers are challenged only indirectly via news footage and period headlines, not by contrary interviews that would offer known arguments to Rumsfeld’s self-serving explanations. 

The film’s title is a quote from one of the enormous number of official memos Rumsfeld generated over the decades. In one wacky rumination from 2004 (Subject: What You Know), he writes of the “things that you think you know that it turns out you do not.” For Morris, this is a four-star analogy for his subject, a polarizing public figure who indeed is a riddle wrapped in an enigma—and cloaked in an impenetrable armor of Orwellian double-talk. As running metaphor, Morris cuts back and forth to images of a deep blue sea, significantly more fathomable than Rumsfeld himself. 

As to any possible policy misfires during his Washington tenures, Rumsfeld blithely chalks them up to the unintended consequences of war, executive decision-making and the inevitable inability for leaders like him to anticipate everything, for Pete’s sake: i.e., heck, Stuff Happens. This expedient philosophy can rationalize pretty much any horrors stretching from Abu Ghraib to Gitmo. If only Emily Littella were still on active duty, I know she’d just say, “Never mind.” 

And so it goes in Rummy-speak, as Morris sends his cameras down the rabbit hole into an upside-down universe where government morality and mea culpas have no standing, yet mad tautologies like “the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence” do. In the question of those well-known phantom WMDs, such inane statements can justify anything, including interminable wars in which bodies are still piling up, peace is not won, and mass Mideast destruction marches on.

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Film Review | Uncovered: The War on Iraq (2004)

Mass Deceptions

by Thomas Delapa


British statesman Benjamin Disraeli said that there are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies and statistics. When it comes to the invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration apparently bamboozled the public with all three.

Further, there are at least two travesties involving the devastating, must-see documentary, Uncovered: The War on Iraq. Only the first has to do with the war itself. The second is that the film is only playing in two theaters in Colorado. If you thought Fahrenheit 9/11 burned the Bush administration, Uncovered pours gasoline on the flames.

Dodging the pitfalls of Michael Moore’s feverish polemic, producer/director Robert Greenwald opts for a reasoned, deliberate approach. At the outset, Greenwald introduces us to his gallery of experts, from ex-security advisor Richard Clarke to former U.S. weapons inspector David Kay. Veteran CIA analysts, ex-military officers, politicians and diplomats round out the interviews.

Though we’ve heard much of the material before over the polarizing last 18 months, Greenwald summarizes it in compelling, if sound-bite, fashion. Uncovered should shock and awe audiences, leaving you infuriated that the U.S. engaged in its first preemptive war against a country that, contrary to the Bush administration claims:

1) Had no weapons of mass destruction.

2) Had no relationship with al-Qaeda.

3) Had no nuclear-weapons program.

In addition, the failure to find any of the above during the American occupation has effectively proven that the U.N. weapons inspection program was working.

Although the Bush administration has now expediently changed its tune for going to war, it behooves us to watch again Secretary of State Colin Powell’s momentous pre-war address before the United Nations. In the words of one sober observer, Powell’s crossing-the-Rubicon speech was "a masterful performance...but none of it was true." Time and time again on TV, Pres. Bush, Vice Pres. Cheney and the White House inner circle insisted that the Hussein regime was a clear and present danger to the United States–thus the decisive reason for going to war.

On that WMD front, today even Kay admits that "We were wrong." During the occupation, Kay’s inspectors were doled a budget of $600 million to seek out the WMDs. Kay sees parallels between the U.S.-led Iraq war and our disastrous 20-year intervention in Vietnam. Both Presidents G.W. Bush and Lyndon Johnson (after the trumped-up Gulf of Tonkin incident) were granted carte-blanche war powers by an acquiescent Congress.

The consensus in the film is the 9/11 attacks presented a convenient excuse for the Pentagon "neo-cons"–like Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle–to execute their neo-imperialist, might-makes-right geopolitical plans. These advisors believe that America has no need to justify its foreign policy, not to its so-called allies and certainly not to the U.N. The plan to install a Western-leaning government in Iraq has been on (or under) the table for years, well before the 9/11 attacks, most notably circulated through the hawkish Project for the New American Century think tank.

Throughout the months leading up to the Iraq war, strategic analyses culled from the CIA were either distorted or selectively used by the White House to sell the war to the American public and the media. When Foreign Service veteran Joseph Wilson challenged these conclusions, he was first subjected to a smear campaign. Then someone* in the know leaked the name of his wife Valerie Plame, a CIA officer, to the conservative press, putting her cover–and life–at risk.

Uncovered: The War on Iraq unrolls like an American tragedy, delineating for now and posterity a watershed moment in our history. But perhaps the real tragedy is yet to come. In this critical election season, the damning truth of Greenwald’s exposé may be lost in the blinding fog of war.

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Originally published in Boulder Weekly, 9/16/04

POSTSCRIPT: On December 18, 2011, the last U.S. troops left Iraq following nearly nine years of warfare. To date, the war has cost over 4,500 American lives and at least $1 trillion; while estimates of Iraqi deaths vary radically, most surveys count at least 100,000.

*Later determined to be Cheney's top aide "Scooter" Libby.

Film Review | No End in Sight (2007)

The Blind Side

by Thomas Delapa


Hindsight may be 20/20, but in the case of the Iraq War, No End in Sight clearly deserves a second look.

Director Charles Ferguson ended his eye-opening 2007 documentary on the eve of the American “surge”—a time when the Iraq occupation was looking like an interminable, Vietnam-style quagmire. Today, while U.S. military operations there have officially ended, some 50,000 American troops remain, and the government's battle against violent, sectarian insurgency remains an ongoing campaign.

Neo-revisionists looking for a way to resurrect George W. Bush’s moribund presidential legacy won’t find any ammunition in this major post-mortem. While Ferguson’s interview subjects run the range of the political spectrum, a consensus appears that America’s overall war strategy was (pick one or more): “a fool’s errand,” “a grave error,” and “we did almost everything wrong.” Perhaps we should go as far to quote former Bush Secretary of State Colin Powell, who once ominously warned of U.S. intentions in Iraq: “You break it, you own it.”

Ferguson delves primarily into the U.S. postwar strategy following President Bush’s infamous “Mission Accomplished” proclamation in May 2003. Many high-level participants— such as senior occupation officer Col. Paul Hughes—seem to agree that American mistakes revolve around three fateful decisions made immediately thereafter: 1) the decision not to declare martial law in the wake of looting and disorder in Baghdad; 2) the wholesale, indiscriminate “de-Ba’athification” that purged the Iraqi government of skilled workers and bureaucrats; 3) the decision to disband the Iraqi army. With regard to the latter, some in the military (which might have been utilized to keep order during the occupation) instead ended up fighting in the insurgency as part of anti-U.S. militias.

If there’s a nonstop theme in No End in Sight, it’s that the Bush administration utterly failed to formulate an adequate plan for the occupation and reconstruction in the aftermath of all that shock and awe. Winning the war was relatively easy. Winning the peace remains as elusive as the search for Saddam Hussein’s WMDs.

While rueful experts such as Hughes and former U.S. Ambassador Barbara Bodine were either marginalized or fired, and many Pentagon policy recommendations were ignored, the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld White House instituted a top-down, take-no-prisoners approach, for instance vastly underestimating the total number of troops needed for the occupation. Not-so-fun fact: In World War II, the Allies devoted two years on a strategy for the German occupation; by contrast, the Bush White House spent less than two months on a plan for postwar Iraq.

For those willing to reconstruct these crucial events, No End in Sight recoils with biting sound bites that tragically refute what we now know. Way back in 2005, Vice President Dick Cheney declares that Iraq was in “the last throes of insurgency.” Likewise, at a 2003 press conference, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld flippantly states that he “doesn’t do quagmires.” And in Famous Last Words department, Arlington division, in 2003 Bush scoffs at talk of an insurgency with a bellicose “Bring ‘em on.”

With the estimate of the war’s overall cost (including veterans’ care) escalating to well over $1 trillion, American taxpayers are still pouring it on. This is a far cry from Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz’s rosy 2003 pitch that Iraq’s reconstruction would pay for itself, the cost offset by gushing Iraqi oil revenues. To date, over 4000 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq, along with at least 100,000 Iraqis. Some three million Iraqis have fled their country.

Contrary to Bush administration predictions, the Iraq War has been no magic carpet ride. One expert even goes as far to say that the war and the chronic Iraqi national instability have actually been instrumental in “reviving radical Islam in the world.”

While the outcome of the tumultuous current events in Egypt are far from certain, recent social revolutions—as in the case of the Soviet Union—have shown time and again that history must take its course, and that the ultimate end to despotic regimes must lie in the power of the people, not in disastrously myopic superpowers.

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2/2/11

Film review | Green Zone

Smart bomb?

by Thomas Delapa

Judging by the deadly initial returns, Jack Nicholson’s “You can’t handle the truth!” might serve as the epitaph for Green Zone, director Paul Greengrass’ fictionalized Iraq War action-thriller about the U.S. search for fictional Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

Perhaps it was an impossible mission that Greengrass volunteered for in this very loose adaptation of Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s 2006 best seller, Imperial Life in the Emerald City. Though Greengrass enlisted his Bourne Supremacy (and Ultimatum) star Matt Damon, he also got conscripted with a self-destructive script by Brian Helgeland, author of such duds as Man on Fire and The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 remake. A few days ago, Greengrass optimistically told The Guardian that, “I’m going to see if I can bring the Bourne audience with me.”

Talk about bad intel.

From the opening shots, Green Zone recoils with a demoralizing déjà vu. We know now that the U.S.-led coalition forces never found any WMDs in Iraq, thus destroying a prime justification for the war. No chemical or biological weapons. Ditto on the notorious Nigerian “yellowcake” uranium.

In fact, what Warrant Officer Roy Miller (Damon) and his Army unit find is “nothing but toilet parts” in their 2003 sweep of a vanquished and bombed-out Baghdad. Despite repeated tips of hidden WMDs, Miller starts to suspect that something is rotten in the liberated state of Iraq, and it isn’t spoiled hummus.

In the seven-year itch since the Iraq invasion, Americans of all stripes have had ample opportunity to point fingers, and Greengrass rounds up some of the usual suspects in this conspiracy-movie throwback. Lining up front and center is a shifty Pentagon neocon (Greg Kinnear) who’ll go to any length to defuse allegations of disinformation or cover-up.

While the record shows that coalition forces lost the WMD battle, the liberal-minded Greengrass dispatches Damon on a quest that’s questionable in its own way: Embedded within the historical facts and documentary realism is a counter-intelligent Hollywood action vehicle. It’s notable that cinematographer Barry Ackroyd also shot the Oscar-winning Hurt Locker, a film that continually went AWOL from a believable reality. Green Zone’s techniques quickly speed off into the Greengrass Zone, where shaky cameras and furious editing ambush the storytelling.

What flashes of facts exist, they come in short bursts between the chaotic action scenes, topped by an interminable finale. As Miller, Damon hunkers down with the same sort of magnetic, steely determination that marked Jason Bourne. A loose cannon with a conscience, Miller goes rogue early, tracking down a missing Iraqi general (Yigal Naor) who may be the Sunni side of Deep Throat. Other sideline players include a skeptical CIA chief (Brendan Gleeson) and a Wall Street Journal reporter (Amy Ryan) who stands in for the duped American press.

At some risk (and not just financially), Universal launched this $100 million twilight Zone, which should at least be saluted for setting the record straight in a major motion picture, even if it comes seven years too late. The problem may not just be in Greengrass’ hyped-up Bourne-again style. Maybe this time, it’s the audience, not Jason Bourne, that’s suffering from amnesia.

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Oscar Wars | The Hurt Locker

I love the smell of roadside bombs in the morning

by Thomas Delapa

Should The Hurt Locker be awarded with an Oscar for Best Picture tonight, it will rank with The Departed as among the least deserving recent films to be decorated with Hollywood’s highest honor.

So here’s a big blue thumbs up to James Cameron’s Avatar—a.k.a. Bambi Goes to Outer Space—rather than ex-wife Kathryn Bigelow’s schlock-and-awe Baghdad action film. On second viewing, I still think Locker should be court-martialed for painfully impersonating the truth.

In the delayed trauma of the film’s stunning accolades (including Best Picture from the National Society of Film Critics), a backlash surge is deservedly underway, starting with Iraq War veterans. Their comments have ranged from “ridiculous” to “absolutely sensationalized.” In Iraq and Afghanistan, the movie has even coined a backhanded salute: To “go Hurt Locker” is to go emotionally ballistic, exaggerating the situation way above and beyond the call of duty.

Critics have been so vanquished by the film’s overblown dramatics, you have to wonder whether Colin Powell gave them the same pep talk he used to strong-arm the U.N. back in 2003. For the record, no weapons of mass destruction were ever found in Iraq. Not even in Saddam Hussein’s beard. And there’s nothing really explosive inside The Hurt Locker, except an endless string of made-in-Hollywood fireworks.

From the opening shots, Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal light their fuses and push the audience’s buttons with the zeal of a mad bomber. In the middle of a 2004 Iraq “kill zone” (actually shot in Jordan), an elite Army bomb-disposal squad suffers the loss of its team leader (Guy Pearce) in the first salvo of the manipulative set-pieces. In his place struts the cocksure and reckless Staff Sgt. William James (Jeremy Renner), an adrenaline junkie equal parts John Wayne, George W. Bush and Robert Duvall from Apocalypse Now.

Throughout her grade-B career (mined with several duds) since she switched from painting, Bigelow has always wanted to hang out with the boys, and has never let believable drama get in the way of kitschy machismo or juiced-up visuals. Instead of that bank-robbing Reagan mask from Point Break, James just picks up a helmet and transfers for a hitch with Bravo Company.

Setting aside the death-defying pyrotechnics, history and politics can be listed as among the film’s collateral damage. Just to make sure you’re always at attention, cinematographer Barry Ackroyd overloads the ersatz-documentary action with an onslaught of quick zooms, jump cuts and hand-held shots. While the good guys are marooned in this booby-trapped desert hellhole, suspicious, beady-eyed Iraqis jabber in Arabic and lurk inside buildings plotting their evil-doing plans.

For all its painful and reckless faults—including some of the worst war-movie dialogue since John Wayne’s The Green Berets—The Hurt Locker does serve to remind us of a war every American wants to forget, even before it’s over. But if its gung-ho trifecta of paranoia, exploitation and xenophobia helps to explain its limited popularity, and if it conquers the Oscars, Bigelow and company will truly be able to march up to the podium and say, “Mission Accomplished.”
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