{"id":571,"date":"2018-08-25T22:44:02","date_gmt":"2018-08-26T05:44:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/?page_id=571"},"modified":"2025-07-20T11:38:18","modified_gmt":"2025-07-20T18:38:18","slug":"iraq-the-movie-2006","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/iraq-the-movie-2006\/","title":{"rendered":"Iraq, the Movie (2006)"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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They had better reasons.<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/b>I was against the war in Iraq from the first suggestion of it. I wrote three columns against the war before it began. Here is one I wrote when it was three years old, and not going well. I was inspired by a scene in the movie, \u201cGettysburg.\u201d The column ran in the Seattle Times, March 22, 2006.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Americans understand war through movies. It is how we tell ourselves why we fight.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Consider Ronald Maxwell’s 1993 picture, “Gettysburg,” made by Ted Turner. In it is a scene with the hero of Little Round Top, Col. Joshua Chamberlain, sitting against a tree with his staff sergeant. Each explains why he fights for the Union. Chamberlain, played by Jeff Daniels, is fighting for equality. He has seen the black man back home in Maine, he says, and there was a man, equal in the eyes of God.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

The sergeant, played by Kevin Conway, has come to America to escape Ireland’s feudal ways. He is fighting, he says, so that “I be treated as I deserve, not as my father deserved. I’m Kilrain, and I damn all gentlemen! There’s only one aristocracy, and that” \u2014 he taps his forehead \u2014 “is right here.”\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

In a different scene, a Tennessean speaks for the Confederacy. “I’m fighting for my rights,” he says, meaning his rights to be left alone, free of domination by Yankees.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

One can imagine an American fighting for any of these things. Now, step into the future and imagine a movie, a serious one, looking back on the Americans beginning their fourth year of fighting in Iraq. Imagine the why-we-fight moment.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

What would the American say?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Would he say he fights to protect his country from weapons of mass destruction? That was the reason given before the invasion.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Would he say he fights so Iraqis can vote? That was the reason given after the invasion. But a soldier might ask why an American should care whether Iraqis can vote, or what kind of government they have. He might ask, too, how valuable democracy would be to them, and how many dead Iraqis they would accept in order to get it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Would he say he fights for Iraq’s petroleum? That is the left wing’s “blood for oil” thesis. A soldier might say it cynically. But Iraq’s petroleum is under the ground; America can’t steal it without long-term occupation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Some would like to do that \u2014 note the military bases under construction \u2014 but in the 21st century we are not going to get away with that. Our legitimate interest in Iraqi oil is the same interest as any net consumer: that the Iraqis produce oil, which they have every intention to do.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Would a soldier say he fights a war on terror? But terror is a tactic, not an enemy. The president of the United States might muddy that distinction, but a soldier would not.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Would a soldier say he fights to stop Islamofascism? That’s a ten-dollar word coined by the neocon right, whose thesis is that the whole world is threatened by a pungent mix of mullah and Mussolini.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

But “Islamofascism” is a propaganda word. Really it means fundamentalist Islamic law, which has little relation to fascism, a political form invented in Italy in the 1920s. Islamic law appeals only to countries already Islamic, and most of them resist it. Iraq would have resisted it, had it not been invaded by Christians. Other than acts of terrorism, which our crusades provoke, America is under no threat from any Islamic political movement.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

The Iraq chaos is more like Ridley Scott’s 2001 movie, “Black Hawk Down.” At the beginning of the film is a scene in which captive Somali leader Osman Atto, played by George Harris, faces Maj. Gen. William Garrison in a darkened room. The Somali offers the American a Cuban cigar.\u00a0“Mister\u00a0<\/i>Garrison,” he says, rhetorically stripping the general of rank, “I think you shouldn’t have come here. This is civil war. This is our war.\u00a0Not yours.”<\/i><\/span><\/p>

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Imagine a future movie about the occupation of Iraq. An Iraqi would say the same.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u00a9 2006 The Seattle Times<\/span><\/em><\/p>

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They had better reasons. \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I was against the war in Iraq from the first suggestion of it. I wrote three columns against the war before it began. Here is one I wrote when it was three years old, and not going well. I was inspired by a scene in the movie, \u201cGettysburg.\u201d The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-571","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=571"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/571\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1482,"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/571\/revisions\/1482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}