‘ That was just a lot of propaganda wasn’t it?’
The nice old lady who asked me that question was probably hoping I would agree with her. I had helped her recover her forgotten jacket in the still darkened movie theater, and I guess she wanted me to be on her side.
‘Yes it was. Pro-war propaganda, which is probably not what you mean’ I replied.
‘awww…’ she growled at me.
I didn’t want to let her down, but I had just seen an early evening showing of Matt Damon’s “The Green Zone,” and I couldn’t help but feel a bit annoyed.
Matt Damon speaks truth to power !
Imagine that you tried to go on vacation in Florida, but wound up in Maine instead. You would probably feel pretty stupid wouldn’t you? You would if you were smart enough to feel stupid at least.
This is essentially what happened to Matt Damon, though I doubt that he has the good grace or intellect to feel properly embarrassed about it. He tried to make an anti-war movie, but he made a pro-war movie instead.
Damon probably thought he was making was a stinging anti-war flick. You know, sticking it to the man and telling truth to power, and all that. I have no doubt that all his lefty/lib friends are sucking up to him extra hard and praising him for being such a brave ‘teller of truth.’
I also have no doubt that the people who funded and promoted this movie, the Hollywood Zionist ratazoids, are snickering at Matt and high sixing each other over their latest coup.
Our story so far…
As a guy, I’m sort of genetically inclined to approve of anything with guns, helicopters, car chases and explosions in it. The Green Zone has lots of that, but it also has a ponderously idiotic and formulaic script that makes you wonder how long it took the monkeys, previously trying to recreate the Collected Works of Harold Robbins by randomly banging keys on a typewriter, to stop and hack this script out.
Matt Damon plays an Army Chief Warrant Officer with a squad of men who have been tasked with chasing down intelligence leads on the locations of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). He gets sent to one empty location after another. After a while it starts to dawn on the Chief that he’s being played for a fool (I know, that’s so totally out of character for Matt, right?).
Matt, the Chief, isn’t happy about this at all. Not one bit. He proceeds to pout and snivel and whine his way through the movie, interspersed with the aforementioned guns, helicopters, car chases, and explosions, as he “proves” that, by golly, there AREN’T WMD’s after all!
So take that you, you , you RIGHT WINGERS!
You can almost see him stick his tongue out at us as he roughs up the Evil Pentagon Dude (Greg Kinnear) at the end who is apparently supposed to embody the entire panopoly of right wing/corporate/military badness.
Part of the problem with this movie is that the entire story was predictable as hell. I mean, was there ANYONE in the audience who didn’t know that Matt was going to end up chasing the General(Yigal Naor), alone and that he would have a final confrontation with the Bad Special Forces Guy (Jason Isaacs)? About the only prediction I missed was my expectation that the portly CIA station chief (Brendan Gleeson) would catch a bullet. Oh well, maybe in the next Matt Damon movie. The monkeys must be kept busy after all.
But the larger problem with this movie is that it is “proving” something that is well known by now. Yes there WERE WMDs in Iraq at some point. We know this because a) we gave them to the Iraqis and b) because, as all the world knows, the Iraqis used them on the Iranians and the Kurds.
We also know that there WEREN’T WMD’s in Iraq by the time we got there because if there were you can damn well bet Bush would have personally had himself perched on top of the U.S. Capitol building with a megaphone so that he could shout it out to the whole dammed world.
In all thy getting, get thee the right freakin’ argument
The main problem however, is somewhat more subtle, and it makes a fool out of Matt Damon in real life not just on the Big Screen. That problem is that Matt, along with most of the left and right in America, has been lured into making not only an old and outdated argument, but the wrong argument. By falling for the, “there were no WMDs!/yes there was!/no there wasn’t!/were not!/were too!” line of argument, he gives up a principle that is more basic, to wit: That Iraqi WMDs was even our business to begin with.
The fact is, there are LOTs of countries with WMD’s in that area. One country in particular has hundreds of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. It has refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty, it has made military threats against Europe and the U.S. and it has attacked U.S. Military forces and killed American servicemen. That country is Israel.
We of course haven’t sentenced that country to “regime change,” under George W. Bush’s unconstitutional doctrine of pre-emptive war. In fact, that country pretty much tells us how it is and what it wants done. That’s why in 2003 that country had its agents of influence in America (AIPAC, ADL, etc) inform President Bush and his feckless counterparts in Congress that they were going to attack Iraq (Actually, this had been planned since 1996. Bush probably knew about it, but it was probably new to most of Congress).
Exploiting simmering outrage of 9/11 as moral cover, the Zionists and their lackeys (Bush and the neo-cons) deftly constructed a false dichotomy surrounding the existence of WMDs. Instantly you had people rallying around one of the two allowed polls of debate in America.
‘Saddam has WMD’s! No he doesn’t! Does too! Does not!’ (sticks out tongues and make faces)
The script that played out, complete with Colin Powell delivering false intel to the UN as “proof,” was almost as bad as the one used in the Matt Damon flick (maybe they used the same monkeys). Everyone knew what was going to happen in the end and all of the pious yammering and posturing was just a boring lead-in to the final act, the invasion of Iraq.
In all that yammering and posturing however, no one bothered to ask this simple question: Why was it our business even if Saddam did have WMDs?
If Matt Damon’s argument is irrelevant, then my argument-over-an-argument must be as well right? Not really, because the neo-cons are at it again, and this is why Matt’s movie, like Colin Powell’s UN presentation and Janine Garaffalo’s whining, are all serving the forces of darkness.
You see, they are at it again.
“They” are the Zionist and their assorted lackeys on the putative right and left, and “it” refers to war, this time with Iran.
Ginning up yet another war for the U.S. to embark upon takes a lot of doing nowadays. Once up on a time all it took was a good false flag attack and BOOM Americans were there man! But those days of easy manipulations are over. It’s not that the congress needs to be persuaded, after all, they are bought and paid for.
Rather it’s those dammed unreliable Americans. Apparently 2 wars, an economic meltdown, 20% (real) unemployment, continued high gas prices, unrelenting third world invasion and an increasingly third world infrastructure to go with it, has made Americans down right unenthusiastic about kicking “fer’ner” butt. Let someone else do it, maybe the Israelis can give it a go. We’d rather not.
Onward christian soldiers !
‘Well tough shit America. You don’t actually think you control your country do you? Shut the hell up, donate your sons (and now your daughters too) for the meat grinder, give us your money, and stay out of our way.’
Now the drumbeat has begun in earnest.
Last Friday the New York Times Week In Review reported on a war game being conducted by the Pentagon that sought to model a ‘limited’ war with Iran.’ Just yesterday, neo-con central (aka The Washington Times) reported that the CIA claims that Iran has the capability to develop nuclear weapons.
Today, the AP reported that the French Dwarf Sarkozy flew all the way across the Atlantic so that he could stand on a box while Obama declared that “sanctions against Iran will be in place with weeks.”
Sounds like war to me.
Amidst this little international kabuki theater, Matt Damon plays his role to perfection. Everyone knows Matt is a leftoid and therefore not to be taken seriously. Matt firmly anchors one pole of “there were no WMD’s” false argument and thus leaves the implied question dangling in the wind,
‘but what if there were…’
‘Well if there were, we’d have to do something about it of course, but there weren’t!’
‘If there were WMD’s we’d have no choice but to create a coalition of the willing and take’em down!‘
‘They lied about WMD’s…’
‘Ok, Ok, but if they DID exist, why then I guess we’d have to do something.‘
‘Sure, but they weren’t there!’
‘I know, but if there WERE WMD’s…‘
‘Ok, if there were…‘
…And all of this neatly sets up the narrow debate within greased chute of Zionist agitation. The idea that America should actually do what is in it’s own interest never seems to enter into the debate.