I saw "The Green Zone" this weekend. Essentially, as AO Scott noted, the film did a pretty decent job of distilling the events and politics of wartime Bagdhad into the action/thriller genre:
To anyone who was paying attention in 2003 and after, this is familiar territory. Mr. Greengrass and the screenwriter, Brian Helgeland, deftly glean material from the historical record, and while they compress, simplify and invent according to the imperatives of the genre - this is a thriller, not a documentary - they do so with seriousness and an impressive sense of scruples. They have clearly studied journalistic accounts of the early days of the war, citing Rajiv Chandrasekaran's vivid "Imperial Life in the Emerald City" as a particular inspiration, and while the picture they paint of infighting among the Americans and growing factionalism among the Iraqis may not be literally accurate in every particular, it has the rough authority of novelistic truth.
At the movie's core is the discovery by an Army officer, played by Matt Damon, that the US government's justification for invasion - Iraqi WMDs - was manufactured.
And watching it made me feel outraged all over again. If anything, the movie should be a reminder of how awful, how devastatingly awful the last administration was, how sick the invasion was, how wrong its supporters were - especially after it was evident it was a sham, a setup, a con job.
Naturally the movie is irking conservatives, who are busy trying to resurrect Bush's reputation. Ross Douthat takes a novel approach for a conservative, and pines for someone to depict the "complexities" of the war, instead of turning it into some over-simplistic story of good vs evil. ("If only Hollywood could be more like George W Bush," writes FDL's Blue Texan, "and embrace a sophisticated, nuanced, shades-of-gray type of worldview - rather than so clumsily dividing the world into good and evil." Or read Daniel Larison's complete smackdown of Douthat.)
Of course, in a way - and not the way Douthat intends - the move is a little over simplistic. For starters, in "The Green Zone," there's much surprise when no WMDs are found and there's shock when it's revealed that the administration had a hand in manufacturing WMD intelligence. Of course, by the invasion, it was pretty clear that there were no WMDs in Iraq, and that the intelligence from the Pentagon was suspect, to say the least.
That is, the move is an over-simplistic flick that augurs how the American public will remember the war, how most are already processing it. Basically, people are remembering that they were hoodwinked, when, in fact, most people had the evidence, heard the dissenting voices, and still supported the war. The public and the media galloped headlong towards Iraq under Bush's banner willingly, despite the plethora of reasonable and well-informed voices that showed there was nothing there...
Thanksgiving is next week, and President Bush could make it a really special holiday by resigning.
The idea is to allow Obama to start ruling as soon as possible. According to Collins, Cheney would have to resign, making Pelosi the president - she'd "obviously" defer to Obama, and the Obama administration would be underway.
Brian Beutler has an even more convoluted succession plan: Rice resigns, Bush appoints Obama as SoS. Bush resigns and Cheney resigns and - voila! - Obama is president!
This, of course, is a little far fetched, to say the least. And maybe not even a good idea. First, Bush probably doesn't want to go - as seen recently, the administration wants to get a lot accomplished before it vacates the White House, including rolling back environmental and economic regulations. Without real political pressure from Congress and the public in the form of impeachment, the administration certainly feels no rush to leave. And does anyone believe Bush agrees with the rest of us, that he's an incompetent who does more harm than good in office? Seems to me, he still thinks his "genius" is misunderstood.
Then there are the little awkward details that make the plan unlikely. As Beutler points out, Pelosi would have to resign as Speaker of the House to become president - powerless, and for a single month. Not likely to happen. Beutler's plan has a little hitch, too: if Obama ascended to the presidency through succession as SoS, wouldn't the next month count as a "term," and prohibit him from running again in 2012?
And, of course, there's the little matter of the constitution and the normal transfer of power from one government to another. Sure, this election was extraordinary, there are a number of crises to consider, and the vast majority of the electorate prefers Obama over Bush...but without any clear reason to jerryrig the transfer, it seems like we'd better off following the normal chain of events, especially if what we're trying to do is separate ourselves from the jerryrigging of rules that the present administration is famous for.
As they have previously, Democratic leaders staunchly oppose Kucinich's impeachment effort. They expect to table the resolution by referring it to the Judiciary Committee, where they expect it to die.
House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyers (D-Md.) suggested yesterday that engaging in a lengthy debate over impeaching Bush in the waning days of his administration is not a productive use of the House's time.
I'm shocked. Shocked.
So, is this a colossal waste of time? Or do we need to impeach to ensure there won't be another law-breaking, Constitutional-trashing administration like Bush's?
A general who grew up in Montana and commanded armored forces in Gulf War I says that Bush's plan won't work. This isn't exactly a shocker. Other military experts, generals, and retired officers have been saying the same thing.
This escalation plan isn't a serious plan. It's just that it was the only plan left. And a fumbling Bush Administration looked at the only two options left on the table -- the ISG's recommendation of starting a drawdown or the McCain plan of escalating -- and went with the one that looked less like admitting defeat.
So they doubled down.
It's tough to wrap one's mind around this administration's infinite ability to make things worse, but they're doing it once again. And they're doing it again over the advice of everyone who has been right from day one and the rest of the country that has realized just how incapable these fools are of even tying their shoes.
For their idiocy, another 20,000 Americans' lives will be in danger. That's the only real result we'll see here.
