Peace Messenger

Guided Missiles, Misguided Men

The American Way of War: Guided Missiles, Misguided Men and a Republic in Peril
by Eugene Jarecki
Free Press / 2008

Eugene Jarecki (pictured below) carries forward the exploration of the pervasive influence of the "military-industrial complex" in American culture presented in his powerful 2006 documentary Why We Fight.  The publisher describes The American Way of War as

a penetrating and revelatory inquiry into how forces within the American political, economic, and military systems have come to undermine the carefully crafted structure of our republic -- upsetting its balance of powers, vastly strengthening the hand of the president in taking the nation to war, and imperiling the workings of American democracy. This is a story not of simple corruption but of the unexpected origins of a more subtle and, in many ways, more worrisome disfiguring of our political system and society.

While in no way absolving George W. Bush and his inner circle of their accountability for misguiding the country into a disastrous war -- in fact, Jarecki sheds new light on the deepest underpinnings of how and why they did so -- he reveals that the forty-third president's predisposition toward war and Congress's acquiescence to his wishes must be understood as part of a longer story

In his farewell address 47 years ago, President Eisenhower identified the "conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry" as both new and far- reaching. Its influence was not just military but "economic, political, even spiritual" thus involving "the very structure of our society."

Bringing to light the connections through which the military-industrial complex extends its influence throughout American culture is what made the Why We Fight documentary so effective. The "spiritual" aspect -- broad but very real ways -- comes through with depth and poigniance. If The American Way of War reinforces and extends the quality of analysis found in the documentary, it will be an exceptionally valuable book.

Dangerously Misleading

Chalmers Johnson on the recent film, "Charlie Wilson's War," based on a book of the same title by George Crile, which celebrates the exploits of rogue Congressman Charlie Wilson in channeling aid to the mujihadeen resistance to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s:

Neither a reader of Crile, nor a viewer of the film based on his book would know that, in talking about the Afghan freedom fighters of the 1980s, we are also talking about the militants of al Qaeda and the Taliban of the 1990s and 2000s. Amid all the hoopla about Wilson's going out of channels to engineer secret appropriations of millions of dollars to the guerrillas, the reader or viewer would never suspect that, when the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, President George H.W. Bush promptly lost interest in the place and simply walked away, leaving it to descend into one of the most horrific civil wars of modern times.

Among those supporting the Afghans (in addition to the U.S.) was the rich, pious Saudi Arabian economist and civil engineer, Osama bin Laden, whom we helped by building up his al Qaeda base at Khost. When bin Laden and his colleagues decided to get even with us for having been used, he had the support of much of the Islamic world. This disaster was brought about by Wilson's and the CIA's incompetence as well as their subversion of all the normal channels of political oversight and democratic accountability within the U.S. government. Charlie Wilson's war thus turned out to have been just another bloody skirmish in the expansion and consolidation of the American empire -- and an imperial presidency. The victors were the military-industrial complex and our massive standing armies. The billion dollars' worth of weapons Wilson secretly supplied to the guerrillas ended up being turned on ourselves....

When imperialist activities produce unmentionable outcomes, such as those well known to anyone paying attention to Afghanistan since about 1990, then ideological thinking kicks in. The horror story is suppressed, or reinterpreted as something benign or ridiculous (a "comedy"), or simply curtailed before the denouement becomes obvious. Thus, for example, Melissa Roddy, a Los Angeles film-maker with inside information from the Charlie Wilson production team, notes that the film's happy ending came about because Tom Hanks, a co-producer as well as the leading actor, "just can't deal with this 9/11 thing."...

My own view is that if Charlie Wilson's War is a comedy, it's the kind that goes over well with a roomful of louts in a college fraternity house. Simply put, it is imperialist propaganda and the tragedy is that four-and-a-half years after we invaded Iraq and destroyed it, such dangerously misleading nonsense is still being offered to a gullible public. The most accurate review so far is James Rocchi's summing-up for Cinematical: "Charlie Wilson's War isn't just bad history; it feels even more malign, like a conscious attempt to induce amnesia."

Chalmers Johnson, "Imperialist Propaganda: Second Thoughts on Charlie Wilson's War," at TomDispatch, January 6, 2008.

The Singing Revolution

In Estonia, song was the weapon of choice when, between 1986 and 1991, hundreds of thousands of Estonian people gathered to sing forbidden patriotic songs and rally for independence, risking their lives to proclaim their desire for a free Estonia.  "The Singing Revolution" is a documentary film that tells the story of the non-violent path Estonia took to free itself from Soviet occupation.

Watch the trailer and find out more at www.singingrevolution.com.

Thanks to Greg Schneider of Pacifc Union College for forwarding information on this.

War Made Easy

"The new film 'War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death' makes arguing against wars easy....

"...It's simply stunning to watch this brilliantly edited video of numerous past presidents using identical lines to promote equally fraudulent wars, and to watch how the media gives the propaganda the same basic spin for each new war. The quality of the video improves; the callous cruelty and deception remain the same." (David Swanson, AfterDowningStreet.org)

"Through painstaking research and fast-paced editing of archival footage, War Made Easy exposes a 50-year pattern of deception that has dragged the U.S. into one war after another. To prove its point, the film exhumes remarkable footage of distortion and exaggeration peddled by presidents from LBJ to George W. Bush." (CommonSenseMag.org)

More at www.warmadeeasythemovie.org

Encounter Point: Film Depicts Bereaved Palestinians and Israelis Who Seek Reconciliation, Not Revenge

The award-winning documentary film Encounter Point portrays grassroots movements that are planting signposts of reconciliation amidst the vengeance and violence of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Bereaved Families Forum, for example, is comprised of families from both sides from which one or more members have been killed in the violence. They are facing the questions which one of them expresses in the film: “So what do you do with this pain? Do you take it and look for revenge and keep the whole cycle of violence going, or do you choose another path to prevent further death and further pain to other parents?”

In one segment, Ali Abu Awwad, whose brother was killed by an Israeli soldier, advocates nonviolence in a discussion with a group of skeptical young fellow Palestinians. In response to one who insists that Palestinians must have “resistance and war,” Ali responds: “I am resisting too. I have to resist. But the form of my resistance is different. Because, think about it: a just cause like ours is being called terrorism. We’ve never been terrorists – but you must convince the world that you are not.”

This segment, along with a report by journalist Evan Derkacz, can be seen at AlterNet: http://www.alternet.org/story/44920/. Additional segments, screening information and much more at the film’s web site: www.encounterpoint.com .

 

The film makers, pictured  left to right:

Julia Bacha, co-director and writer/editor, recently co-wrote and edited the critically-acclaimed documentary, Control Room, about Al Jazeera, for which she was nominated to the 2005 Writer’s Guild of America Award.

Nahanni Rous, producer, played a key role in selecting, interviewing and building relationships with Encounter Point’s film subjects, and in shaping the film throughout the editing process.

Ronit Avni, director/producer/executive producer, is also founder and director of Just Vision, a non-profit that widens the influence of Palestinian and Israeli grassroots peace builders.

Joline Makhlouf, producer, is the East-Jerusalem-based project co-manager at Just Vision. She has worked as a facilitator at Face to Face/Faith to Faith, Building Bridges for Peace and Seeds of Peace, all of which bring together youth from conflict zones around the world.