Green Zone

If there is one thing Americans do not like (besides intellectualism, sharing and guilt) it is war movies made about conflicts that the U.S. has showed badly in. With few exceptions – Apocalypse Now, The Deer Hunter, Born on the Fourth of July – and those certainly benefited from the anti-war feelings of that era, we do not like to be reminded of our diplomatic and military failures abroad. I will accentuate my point with a simple question:

What is the only Korean War film to make over $10 million at the box office?

M.A.S.H., which was essentially an anti-Vietnam War film that happened to be set in Korea.

Despite a few quality films like Pork Chop Hill, Fixed Bayonets! and The Steel Helmet which deal with that forgotten “police action”, we Americans have time and time again voted with our wallets to silence these portrayals of wars we have found to be grossly mismanaged or questionably warranted. We have stayed away from theaters in droves so as not to encourage these glimpses into our less successful warmongering. Yet Hollywood continues to pump out re-enactments of our bellicosity and want of altruistic slaughter in quicker fashion with each international donnybrook in which we become embroiled. Which is why I find it curious that there has been no definitive movie on our Afghan endeavor; or as it is fondly called in Washington circles - “Operation Jam Some Freedom Up Their Perahan Tunbans”.

But they have more than made up for this glaring omission by pelting the American movie going public with a host of films about the war in Iraq. As a matter of fact, Iraq could be called our first “sequel” war. Not fulfilled by Kuwait's freedom, in need of further blood from a Tin-pot dictator that called his father names, and because the first war went so swimmingly, George the Lesser decided once was not enough and demanded an extension of the story.

From Jarhead to Three Kings to No End in Sight to The Hurt Locker to The Ground Truth to Redacted to The War Tapes to The Men Who Stare at Goats we have seen all sorts of military monkeyshines and Haji-hatin’ high jinks about our boys on the Iraqi front; some of them vicious, some absurd, some comical – kind of like the war itself. Unless, of course, you’re an Iraqi citizen or have lost a loved one, in which case it just plain sucks.

What’s different about Paul Greengrass’ Green Zone, despite it being a rather dull exercise in suspense while there’s a goddamn war going on, is that it’s the rare American military film which does actually question the motives of the “good guys”. It’s done in a real insulting “black hat/white hat” sort of way, but at least it attempts to point to the lies which have gotten over 4,000 American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens killed. All in the name of a “war on terror” which exacerbates a problem that could have easily been squelched or significantly reduced with the help of a few international criminal investigations and about 100 special ops troops, strategically placed with air support. Those sorts of simple solutions didn’t fit in with the Bush Administration’s big picture for shock capitalism, tactical land grabs and a vampiric need for fossil fuels, however.     

As Jim Morrison used to scream, “We want the world and we want it… NOW!!!”

Neo-con must feed.

With that said, upon the shovelfuls of soil in the coffin where Dick Cheney rests yet does not sleep, I promise not to let this film review degrade into some political screed or jeremiad on the senseless, monstrous, perfidious, domestically inept, greedy, criminal, traitorous, Constitution raping, malicious, short-sighted, strip mining of the soul of a country, abasement of the American spirit and overall national embarrassment that defined the illegal cabal that was the Bush Administration.

Green Zone doesn’t get into that. There’s the “Mission Accomplished” speech being applauded and a few other references here and there to names that sound like real people, but the characters are all composites. For the most part, it’s an ersatz documentary that indicts some people for the folly but refuses to be bold enough to face the demons and name the names. It takes pains to ennoble a few Iraqis and mentions the internal struggle of the religious and political factions of the country. But it also suggests that the WMD informer was an Iraqi Army general who was used as a dupe for a press leak, not an unreliable stooge hungry for cash and willing to provide bad intel to an agency eager to hear anything that would push their nefarious plot into action.

There’s even an intimation that the CIA acted righteously in the aftermath of the invasion. Wouldn’t that be a first? Of course, when dirty covert operatives are trumped by their own President on verboten tactics and systemic implementations of cruelty and torture have been urged by the very top of one’s command chain, even intelligence rats must run for cover and wonder if the entire U.S. Government has been usurped by the spirits of the Inquisition. There was certainly something in W.'s creepy Christianity and the willingness of his handlers to delve into medieval policy tactics that may have turned off many of the ghost soldiers and spooks. But few of them have spoken up about it.

Enlightenment, rule of law, and freedom be damned.

Again, I promised I wouldn’t carp on the bygones our new esteemed leader has bestowed with his “look forward, not back” mentality; the political equivalent to the magician’s sleight of hand when he wants a diversion in order to draw attention away from the meat of the trick. Unfortunately, Obama’s bag of tricks has proven to be an empty one. Nothing but broken and idle promises; sackless excuses about craving bi-partisanship when he holds the greatest House majority in two generations. In his second timid year, it’s beginning to look like the one decent thing he ever could have done was to prosecute the animals that fouled this nation from 2000-2008. Yet he sits on his fucking hands.

That window is shut now. The lying asshole is left with an economy that will sink until the next election, a glaringly failed promise to remove lobbying influence (and a failed transparency promise to boot) from the way Washington does business. And an escalation of the war in Afghanistan.

But, like I said, I'm not going to go on about it.

How does all this relate to Green Zone?

SNAFU, Motherfuckers, SNAFU.    

The film?

Bourne 4: The Baghdad Diaries

We’ve lost our moral compass.

The war continues under the pretext of keeping us safe from the mighty terrorists. Some shit about fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here. Or is it about spreading democracy to the eager people of the Middle East? It's hard to keep up with the lies.

But we know it's about the oil. The sweet, precious oil. And those delicious no bid contracts to the Bush Administration friends for the security, training and rebuilding of that which they destroyed in the first place.

That is why.

The spill in the Gulf is but a nuisance in the grand scheme. There will be more spills. There will be more wars.

You like driving your vehicle?

Then shut your stupid mouth while the real Americans solve things.

The MAN is in charge.

And I lied about this review not turning into a DFH screed.

See? You just can't trust anybody nowadays.