Now here’s a documentary to inflame both liberals and conservatives. Liberals, because it’s an ultra-condensed smack to the face about everything wrong with American imperialism from World War II forward, our military-industrial complex and our politicians. And conservatives, because liberals hate freedom and dare to question our president, or something; I’m just taking a stab here, but I’m sure it’s along those lines.
The movie has no resolution and numerous answers are given throughout to the repeated question, “Why do we fight?” What it does is present the staggering growth and power of the American military, wars started by lies, half-truths, commerce and the urge—nay, need—to stretch thin and spread the American way of leadership and life over the globe. We hear from the politicians, advisors and think-tank wonks that keep the war machine fueled for one reason while telling us another. It’s nothing new: we spend lots of money on defense, the military spends lots of money on ads and recruitment, war makes many people very rich and as such, will not be phased out anytime soon. Unsettling facts and figures roll one after another, incessantly, often interspersed with newsreel footage of soldiers, war and death, cheeky propaganda clips from the 40s and 50s and ironically cheerful songs. You sit there like Alex in A Clockwork Orange, brainwashed, eyes pinched open.
Several additional and unnecessary cut scenes suggest not so subtly that we Americans, in addition to our war glorification, are also a bunch of lumbering, shitstained water buffalo. We get shots of our ubiquitous highway fast food/gas station strips, gravy-intensive country buffets, American flag windmills, airshows and their crowds of white trash, etc. Yes, we get the point and we hang our oily, imperialistic heads in self-loathing shame.
But for anyone who despises the current Bush administration and its militaristic ties past and present, the most recent clips alone are an ultimate Greatest Hits package: Dick and Halliburton, the African uranium debacle, the fairytale Iraq-9/11 connection, Rummy chummy with Saddam, Bush with that megaphone at Ground Zero, precision bombing in Iraq, and a bunch of those cringe-worthy patriotic soundbites from W. The elderly woman sitting next to me kept tsking and sighing loudly and I thought she might soon hurl something smelly at the screen.
The most heartfelt stories among a dozen or so talking heads in the film are both coincidentally New York ones: the Vietnam vet/retired NYPD cop with ties to 9/11 who initially backs the war, and the young, confused kid whose mom just died and is enlisting in the Army. I kept thinking, “These guys need to meet up for coffee downtown and talk things over.”
A fine flick and one you’re likely to leave sad and angry.