The Very Inconvenient Truths About How We Fucked Up In Iraq

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I was watching the news the other day — MSNBC, CNN, it doesn’t matter — when I saw a video clip that was almost surreal. The Prez was jogging with two double amputees. Apparently, they were Iraq War veterans who had been outfitted with the latest in prosthetics, proving that they can run with the best of them. Now, while it’s great that technology in that area has progressed to the point that people can function regardless of disabilities, it’s distasteful as hell that Bush would use the jog as another photo op and a plug for his latest half-assed assurance that veterans will be afforded the very best in medical care. It caused me to flashback to the first of May 2003, when Bush, resplendent in fighter pilot gear, stood astride an aircraft carrier and proclaimed that the Coalition had emerged victorious in the Iraqi War.

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Over four years later, over 4000 American soldiers have died in Iraq, and more than 20,000 have been wounded. Some estimates put the Iraqi civilian death toll at well over 600,000. Clearly, in the summer of 2003, the battle to secure Iraq was just beginning.

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No End in Sight is a film that coldly details the crucial missteps by the Bush administration in the days following the fall of Baghdad. First-time director Charles Ferguson’s film cannot be described as a left wing diatribe — there are no Michael Moore-style bombastics here. Rather, this is a film that raises emotional temperature by virtue of its objective approach. Ferguson, a former senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, with a solid background in political science, steers away from obvious ideology, allowing the chronology of events to speak for themselves.

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Putting those events into perspective are a number of administration officials, including former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, General Jay Garner (who was initially in charge of the Iraqi occupation) and Ambassador Barbara Bodine, who was in charge of Baghdad in 2003. Many of the people interviewed were on the ground in Iraq, and those who weren’t, were directly involved in the planning stages of Iraqi reconstruction. The most impassioned of the interviewees is Col. Paul Hughes, former officer of strategic policy in Iraq. He pulls no punches as he recounts how his efforts, and those of other advisors, were trivialized, and in many cases outright ignored, by administration officials at home.

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No End in Sight takes no position on our justifications for going to war with Iraq. It does look at how we fucked up the aftermath by allowing career politicians with no military experience to oversee the rebuilding of the country. As a result, we were left with insufficient troop levels to maintain the unsteady peace. Donald Rumsfeld and others in the Bush administration labored under the fallacious premise that the Coalition forces would be greeted as liberators. As a result, they paid scant attention to the realities of what was happening on the ground, and essentially turned a deaf ear to military officials working there. In effect, there was no plan to rebuild Iraq. Consequently, the military, with no police authority, did nothing to stop the widespread looting following the fall of Baghdad. That early looting also included robbing weapons caches of the Hussein regime.That was only the beginning.

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Under the auspices of Paul Bremer, the Iraqi military was dismantled, and all Ba’athists were purged from the government. This left thousands of highly trained professional and military personnel unemployed and disgruntled. That move was largely instrumental in the origins of the current insurgency. By 2006, Americans were hardly seen as liberators, but rather as an occupying force.

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This film doesn’t delve into the current troop surge, or any of the current debates surrounding the war. It doesn’t need to. It graphically illustrates how we got into this mess. From the outset, the Bush administration mishandled the reconstruction of Iraq with recklessness, arrogance, and incompetence. The beauty of No End in Sight is the way in which it deftly pursues that history relentlessly, but with chilling objectivity.

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No End in Sight won the Special Jury prize for Best Documentary at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Expect it to be in the running for an Oscar this year. It is, without doubt, the most relevant documentary about the Iraq War thus far. No End in Sight is now playing in select theatres in New York and Washington, DC, and will be playing across the country later in August. A DVD release is tentatively scheduled for 30 October.

Two Spheres of Rock

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Books about rock music, and especially about the sordid histories of rock musicians, tend to leave me cold. Books, no matter how hard they try, can’t capture the primal urgency of the music. Recently, I’ve come across a couple of books, however, that make me think that perhaps I’ve been reading the wrong books. That being said, I still suggest you crank up the respective music described to achieve maximum impact.

Part graphic novel, part biography, part shooting script and part fanzine tribute, Gorillaz: Rise of the Ogre is a lavish book detailing the origins of the world’s first virtual rock band. Depending on your point of view, Gorillaz are either the animated creation of Damon Albarn of the band Blur and Tank Girl illustrator Jamie Hewlett, or an actual band from the backstreets of cyberspace. Rise of the Ogre makes a convincing case for the latter theory.

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It’s not even a matter of suspending disbelief. All one need do is allow the premise that cyberspace is another dimension of reality with which we’re only recently communicating, due to our tinkering with computers. If we accept that idea, then the entire Gorillaz phenomenon takes on an entirely new complexion. Through their music, we get glimpses of the slightly different plane in which they dwell. And since they do exist in a reality that’s a tiny bit out of synch with our limited perceptions, we see them almost as cartoon characters, and hear their music as something comfortingly familiar, yet ominously alien. It may sound far-fetched at first, but consider this: cartoon characters don’t produce debut albums that skyrocket to #1 in record time, as Gorillaz did in 2001 (about the time the Internet changed the face of communication.) Coincidence?—I don’t think so.

Rise of the Ogre traces the origins of Gorillaz, beginning with the birth of bassist/mastermind Murdoc Niccals, and following him through his formative years of low-paying jobs and failed bands. It chronicles his fateful first encounters with Stuart Pot, who would become known as 2D, the band’s singer and sometime keyboardist. Guitarist Noodle had herself shipped FedEx from Japan to join the band, after answering an ad in NME. She was voted one of Teen People’s “25 Hottest Stars Under 25” in 2006 - no small feat for a “cartoon” character. Drummer Russell Hobbs, a native of Brooklyn, New York, was a veteran of street wars when he joined Gorillaz, and has been known on more than one occasion to serve as the group’s unofficial protector.

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The book can’t be dismissed as a promotional tool for another self-serving rock group. Rise of the Ogre pulls no punches as it chronicles the numerous rises, falls and resurrections of Gorillaz, all brilliantly illustrated with archival “photos” that show the band at their best - and worst. Interviews with such notables as Neneh Cherry, Dennis Hopper and Ike Turner add a dimension of credibility to the proceedings.

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While Rise of the Ogre may be best taken with several grains of salt, it is no more audacious than Strange Brew: Eric Clapton & the British Blues Invasion 1965-1970. In order to fully appreciate this 350 page tome, you have to first accept its core premise that British Blues can be traced to Eric Clapton’s stint with John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers. That’s certainly debatable, but author Christopher Hjort is undaunted in his pursuit of that thesis. What results is an exhaustive, and often exhausting chronology of British Blues as it played out on a daily basis between 1965-1970.

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Eric Clapton, as the title would suggest, is the central player here, but he is by no means the only character. It begins with Clapton leaving the Yardbirds at the age of 20, and joining Mayall’s struggling Bluesbreakers, wherein he became the darling of the burgeoning blues scene. But it goes beyond Clapton as catalyst, and illustrates the parallels between his career and those of Peter Green (who would co-found Fleetwood Mac) and Mick Taylor (who would go on to transform the sound of the Rolling Stones). Other parallel careers spring from there, as the degrees of separation narrow to include the early days of Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page.

Strange Brew utilizes every newspaper clipping, every magazine notice, every handbill, in fact, any and everything it can pull out of the hat to give a sense of urgency to the British blues boom. It succeeds largely because it literally takes those five years and breaks them down to a daily chronology. That’s also its shortcoming.

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It’s not a book to read cover-to-cover, unless you’re obsessive-compulsive, or a rabid rock historian. There’s a lot of information here, and finding analogies between Jethro Tull and the Bluesbreakers is certainly admirable, but the wealth of info can become tiresome. On the other hand, Strange Brew is a great book to merely pick up and open to any given page. Either way, you’ll know more than you ever thought you wanted to know about the British Blues Invasion.

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It gets down to this: Rock and roll is a sentient being, constantly evolving and living with its own heartbeat. Its histories are woven of legend, and cannot be tied to a singular version of reality. Whether we’re detailing the history of British blues, as in Strange Brew, or whether we’re glimpsing into an alternate universe, as with Rise of the Ogre, is largely irrelevant. What’s important is that the music is so integral to our self-image that we feel compelled to archive it.

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And that's where the reality really sets in forever.

Gossip Fodder in Steve McQueen's Ashes

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You can’t really define “cool” with words — attempting to do so just isn’t ... cool. But we all know cool when we encounter it. Jack Nicholson is cool. So were Miles Davis and Frank Sinatra. Mustangs are cool — or at least, they used to be. Steve McQueen proved how cool a Mustang can be in 1968 when he starred alongside one in Bullitt. Car chases were redefined, and Dodge Chargers never completely recovered. But I can tell you this: had Steve McQueen been behind the wheel of a Charger, rather than the Mustang, automotive design might look much different today.

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Now, that’s cool. And Steve McQueen defined it with just a look or a phrase. Even now, nearly 27 years after his death, he still does. Throughout his too-short career, he was an enigma whose on-screen persona rarely strayed far from the actual man, even though he was often at odds with himself, and those around him, as a result. Perhaps because he was so guarded, nobody’s ever produced a truly definitive biography about him.

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Unfortunately, Steve McQueen: an American Rebel does little to change that. Loosely based on Marshall Tirell’s 1993 book, Richard Martin’s documentary chronicles McQueen’s life fairly accurately, but rarely delves beyond the superficial. In fact, it more often than not comes across as a personal reminiscence by Martin, who introduces the film by emphasizing that he and McQueen were “drinking buddies” back in the day. The day in question was the late 1950s, when they were hustling work in New York City. That would have made a good introduction had Martin used that as a basis for his credibility for making the documentary. The problem is, he doesn’t let the good old days go. Instead, he threads his own life into some sort of parallel of McQueen’s.

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To be honest, I’d never heard of Richard Martin before viewing this documentary. Truth is, he’s had a less than illustrious career in the film industry. Yet, he persists in peppering the film with trivia about himself, letting us know that while McQueen was making such and such film, he was abroad, scouting locations or securing funds for some since-forgotten movie. It’s as if he’s screaming “I coulda been a contender!”

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Martin’s personal insecurities aside, An American Rebel is entertaining in a fluffy kind of way. We already knew that McQueen was a Hollywood bad boy, but this film only skims the underlying motivations behind the persona. His father deserted him and his alcoholic mother when he was a baby, he had run-ins with the law as a kid, he always had problems with authority — all of that’s common knowledge to any fan. It would have been nice to see something beyond the Hollywood hype about him — interviews with people who knew him, footage other than movie clips — anything that would have shed light on Steve McQueen the man.

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There are some tidbits scattered among all this. For instance, McQueen turned down a role in the original Ocean’s 11 when Hedda Hopper advised him, “Do you want to be a movie star, or a Frank Sinatra flunky?” A prior engagement saved him from being a victim when Charlie Manson’s guys went on their murder rampage, an incident that prompted him to carry a loaded handgun at all times thereafter.

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Steve McQueen: an American Rebel is full of interesting anecdotes about the man and his career. Sadly, the film lacks a cohesive focus, so all of the information is scatter-gunned about the landscape of the documentary. For those of us who grew up with the man who starred in Bullitt, The Thomas Crown Affair, The Sand Pebbles, and Nevada Smith, among others, it’s not going to offer many new insights. But as a primer for a generation who may only vaguely know of Steve McQueen, it's a good introduction to what cool means.

Armageddon in Black and White

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The one thing that looms large in our collective consciousness is the prospect of Armageddon. Some twisted nerve in our psyches has a need to dwell on the unthinkable, and it’s probably because we just have to know how it all ends. Fail Safe takes that premise to one terrifyingly possible conclusion.

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The premise, originally presented in the 1962 novel by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler, hinges not on troop movements but on the fallibility of our engineering arrogance. Sidney Lumet’s 1964 Playhouse 90 adaptation of Fail Safe remains a classic drama of cold war tensions. Like Dr. Strangelove (also released in 1964), Fail Safe postulated mutually assured destruction as the result not of war, but of diplomatic wranglings and mechanical failures. A computer malfunction prompts a U.S. bomber squadron to think they have orders to attack Moscow with nuclear weapons. Because of precautionary procedures, the order is irreversible. The crew’s training preempts them from accepting radio transmissions, as they would most likely be Russian decoys. As the planes race resolutely to accomplish their mission, it’s left to diplomacy to ward off global catastrophe.

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The 2000 version of Fail Safe is no less powerful than its earlier incarnations. Executive produced by George Clooney, it aired live and in black and white on CBS 9 April 2000. Even with Walter Cronkite noting in his introduction that it was the first attempt by CBS in 39 years to telecast a drama live, this is hardly an exercise in nostalgia. Granted, the Soviet Union no longer exists, and we like to believe that we’ve put the possibility of mutually assured destruction behind us. As this teleplay eloquently illustrates, however, the spectre of global holocaust still looms before us, regardless of how the players and the tactics have changed.

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Played as a live performance, Fail Safe has a sense of immediacy that a theatrical film would be hard pressed to replicate. Working within the parameters of what is essentially a stage play, the mostly male cast deliver performances that inexorably draw the viewer into the tensions the characters face. Richard Dreyfuss as the President and Harvey Keitel as the battle hardened but war weary General Black are particularly noteworthy in their pivotal roles. Sam Elliot and Brian Dennehy are also impressive as the gung ho congressman and the cocky desktop general who see their sense of wonder unravel as the East and West careen deeper into the nuclear nightmare. George Clooney, as the supremely dedicated pilot Col. Grady, in whose hands the fate of the civilized world rests, turns in a brilliantly understated performance.

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Fail Safe is much more than a daring experiment in live television, though. The fact that the actors were working without a net, as it were, heightens the tension of the telecast in that the format didn’t allow for second takes. Stephen Frears, better known as a film director whose credits include The Grifters and The Queen, proves his prowess in the live medium here, despite a couple of insignificant glitches. But the real power of Fail Safe is in its ability to convey the very real threat of humankind’s inability to harness the forces it unleashes. In that regard, it’s as timeless as the story of Prometheus. It warns us that in our hands, the world will end not in a roar, but in a sadly whining whimper.

My Wayward Ways of the Past Week

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Wow! It really does appear I've been remiss in posting-- another bored blogging casualty who gave up the cyberghost. Actually, I've been busy. Most of my activities over the past week are relatively inconsequential, unless you consider flooding of Biblical proportions important. I have to tell you, though--it's not as bad as the news networks would have you believe. A good camera angle can make anything look disastrous, especially when placed next to a raging creek.

But I've kept busy. I'm doing a weekly column for Blogcritics you might want to check out. It's all about the weekly new DVD releases. You know I wouldn't steer you wrong.

Just thought I'd let you know. I worry that much about you losing sleep.