On the 10th anniversary of the Iraq invasion, why we do praise the converted over the initially right?

I think it's terrific that Republican Senator Rob Portman of Ohio has come out in support of gay marriage.  I think it's notable that he came to this conclusion after his 21-year old son came out of the closet, as the more would-be homophobes are forced to actually put a human face on the theoretical 'other' of homosexuality the faster this remaining prejudice will go away. One of the major cornerstones to doing away with institutionalized racism was the white World War II soldiers who served alongside African-American soldiers and realized that they weren't lesser creatures.  But this news story ties into something that frankly I was going to write about on Tuesday to commemorate the ten-year anniversary of the Iraq invasion.  In short, those in the mainstream media, especially in the beltway press, seem to reserve a level of respect for those who once were blind but now can see.  

For Presidents' Day: The prescient politics of Air Force One...

In a two-for-one deal, today we discuss both an above-average Die Hard riff and a film explicitly about presidential politics.  As an action picture, Air Force One remains a rather terrific adventure, even if it follows the beat-for-beat structure of Die Hard a bit more than the likes of Under Siege or Speed. It's superbly acted by Harrison Ford and Gary Oldman, while containing several strong action beats and a thoughtful adult presentation of its subject matter. But putting aside its worth as a genre exercise, it was and remains a fascinating piece of subtly political cinema.  First and foremost, it stands as a prime example of the pre-9/11 idea that a big studio popcorn film could have explicit politics, even morally complicated politics, without being considered overtly political.  Second of all, it stands as a potent and prescient meditation on the personality-driven nature of today's governmental bodies, the 'cult of personality' if you will.  The whole film becomes a meditation on the political legacies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, especially when it comes to our reactions to their respective foreign policy.

How Zero Dark Thirty's unflinching objectivity opens the film up to simplistic accusations of ideological partisanship.

Spoiler warning, I suppose...

There is going to be a lot of debate over the next few months about just where on the political divide Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty happens to sit.  I argued in my review that it merely looks at what happened and what was done without explicitly endorsing or condemning it.  But in our somewhat simplistic media age, impartiality can be seen as being politically partial, depending on what your film happens to contain.  I've written about this before, back when The Green Zone came out (read it HERE).  Just because a film is about evil corporations who kill people doesn't mean it's intended as liberal propaganda and just because a pregnant woman chooses to not have an abortion doesn't mean it's an anti-choice screed.  I'd argue part of the point of Zero Dark Thirty is that non-fiction rarely falls into specific political or ideological dogmas.  At a glance, the film shows brutal torture ordered by Republican President Bush eliciting information that allowed for Democratic President Obama to order a mass killing by US troops in a sovereign country with only a token belief that the people about to be gunned down were the intended targets.  The film dares to neither explicitly condemn the torture nor remotely take joy in the climactic execution, presenting both events as morally reprehensible even if perhaps necessary to the proverbial 'greater good'.  Even if you argue that the film states that torture may well have worked (although the film certainly acknowledges that the carrot works better than the stick) and that we certainly 'got' Bin Laden, it also argues that we damn well should take a moment to inquire at what cost our 'victory' was achieved.

Who cares and why bother? How national apathy and the 'death of outrage' killed the modern political thriller.

Besides being a terrific thriller, Enemy of the State serves as a touchtone of sorts. No, it wasn't the last adult-skewing, star-driven R-rated thriller released by a major studio, although it seemed that way up until a few years ago. No, the whip-smart Will Smith/Gene Hackman high-tech chase picture was the last time that the classic 'man on the run' template made sense. It was a classic conspiracy thriller, based in the idea that forces in the American government were up to no good, and people who had stumbled upon this information had to be silenced. It was also rooted in the idea that the halls of Congress and the American people would be horrified by the idea that covert forces were up to devious doings, which in turn necessitated murderous cover-ups. I would argue that this now innocently naive idea is yet another victim of a post-9/11 mindset. So as Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner) raced around the world with darker factions of the US government on his tail during The Bourne Legacy (review), I couldn't help but wonder "Why bother?". What exactly would be the consequences if America found out that the government had been playing around with science in order to make super-awesome covert killing machines for black-ops missions? Recent evidence suggests that few would do more than feign outrage, share the story on Facebook, and click on the next article.

Curveball admits lies that led to Iraq war. Yet those who doubted back in 2002 are still marginalized as less credible than those who believed.

In this article in The Guardian, Iraqi defector Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, nicknamed 'Curveball' admits that he made it all up. By 'all', he is referring to the various stories of Saddam Hussein's Weapons of Mass Destruction program that was the primary reason that the Bush/Cheney administration used as justification for invading and occupying Iraq in 2002 and 2003. Over 100,000 Iraqi civilians and nearly 5,000 American soldiers are now dead. The war will end up costing American taxpayers $3 trillion when all is said and done. Whenever the GOP blabs on about the insanely high national debt, we never hear about the two wars fought on a credit card. But the Iraqi occupation is a big reason why the country is going broke, deprived of blood and treasure on a damned crusade that was founded on the falsehoods of a now-admitted liar. Which is what many of us, those you ridiculed and mocked, have known for the last nine years.