One of the interviewees muses that rebuilding Iraq would be difficult, that there were 500 ways we could go wrong and only 2 or 3 in which we could go right. "We didn't realize," she concludes, "that we were going to go through all 500." Is this a Bush-bashing propaganda piece? Not really. Bush rarely comes up, partly because he was out of the loop on most of the important decisions, such as disbanding the Iraqi army, de-Ba'athifying the nation, and so forth. He'd evidently turned all of that over to the people who really get clobbered here, namely Cheney, Wolfowitz, Bremer, and especially Rumsfeld.
The film lays out for us things that generally most of us already know about. It's not about combat, except insofar as combat appears as a consequence of mismanagement at higher levels. It doesn't jerk easy tears. A few soldiers tell us what it's like to be blown up. A few Iraqis describe kidnappings of their friends, neighbors, and children. But nobody breaks into sobs and shows us his wounds, and the anecdotes aren't detailed. The justification for the war is barely touched on, and Constitutional issues aren't raised. There's hardly any musical score and it's not melodramatic. The appeal is to logic and perception, not emotion, although nobody would call the film dull in any way.
The interviewees we meet are sober and convincing, even as they confess their own misjudgments. Rumsfeld and the rest refused to be interviewed for obvious reasons. Their decision is understandable but it leaves the field open for critics of the war. The interviewer is not especially hostile, even to subjects who believe the reconstruction was handled well, like Walter Slocumbe. But the critics are not rabid left-wingers either, just military people, diplomats, and cogs in the wheel of nation rebuilding.
What a tragic waste this has been. Never mind the physical and mental suffering of everyone involved -- except, evidently, those who are ultimately responsible for the tragedy. As of the time this film was released in 2007, the eventual cost of the war in Iraq was estimated by two highly respected economists (one a Nobelist) at $1.86 trillion. Think of what we could do with that amount domestically. And, ironically, who has benefited the most from this ill-conceived and hasty invasion? Our adversary for the past 30 years, Iran. We eliminated their greatest enemy.
The film prompts considerations that go beyond Iraq. Maybe some nations simply don't have the infrastructure for the kind of Jeffersonian democracy that we enjoy. Maybe at some level, communities are best suited for a kind of benign totalitarianism. In city neighborhoods dominated by the Mafia, corruption is endemic but there are only occasional outbursts of violence. And the neighborhood runs smoothly when everyone knows what's expected of him. It's unjust but within its limitations it works. During the chaos of 2007, one of the Iraqis interviewed on the street shouts, "If this is democracy, we don't want it. Give us a strong man and bring us order." Something like that.
The film lays out for us things that generally most of us already know about. It's not about combat, except insofar as combat appears as a consequence of mismanagement at higher levels. It doesn't jerk easy tears. A few soldiers tell us what it's like to be blown up. A few Iraqis describe kidnappings of their friends, neighbors, and children. But nobody breaks into sobs and shows us his wounds, and the anecdotes aren't detailed. The justification for the war is barely touched on, and Constitutional issues aren't raised. There's hardly any musical score and it's not melodramatic. The appeal is to logic and perception, not emotion, although nobody would call the film dull in any way.
The interviewees we meet are sober and convincing, even as they confess their own misjudgments. Rumsfeld and the rest refused to be interviewed for obvious reasons. Their decision is understandable but it leaves the field open for critics of the war. The interviewer is not especially hostile, even to subjects who believe the reconstruction was handled well, like Walter Slocumbe. But the critics are not rabid left-wingers either, just military people, diplomats, and cogs in the wheel of nation rebuilding.
What a tragic waste this has been. Never mind the physical and mental suffering of everyone involved -- except, evidently, those who are ultimately responsible for the tragedy. As of the time this film was released in 2007, the eventual cost of the war in Iraq was estimated by two highly respected economists (one a Nobelist) at $1.86 trillion. Think of what we could do with that amount domestically. And, ironically, who has benefited the most from this ill-conceived and hasty invasion? Our adversary for the past 30 years, Iran. We eliminated their greatest enemy.
The film prompts considerations that go beyond Iraq. Maybe some nations simply don't have the infrastructure for the kind of Jeffersonian democracy that we enjoy. Maybe at some level, communities are best suited for a kind of benign totalitarianism. In city neighborhoods dominated by the Mafia, corruption is endemic but there are only occasional outbursts of violence. And the neighborhood runs smoothly when everyone knows what's expected of him. It's unjust but within its limitations it works. During the chaos of 2007, one of the Iraqis interviewed on the street shouts, "If this is democracy, we don't want it. Give us a strong man and bring us order." Something like that.