The movie Green Zone, starring Matt Damon, and directed by the previous Damon successes in the Jason Bourne Trilogy opened in theatres today. Advertisements did not mention that it was an Oliver Stone Production, which speaks loudly about the bias of the movie.
The movie is moderately well-done as an action-packed war movie. It is situated in the early days of the Iraq War and the unseating of the Saddam Hussein Regime.
Historically, there are some arguments that most unbiased viewers would agree upon, and serve as major background for the movie:
1. The invasion was largely instigated on past knowledge that Iraq had possessed weapons of mass destruction (having used them on villages of Kurds in the North).
2. There was no proof of Hussein having destroyed the weapons of mass destruction (WMD's).
3. Repeated attempts to inspect Iraq for these weapons were delayed, denied or obstructed.
4. Intelligence reports that these WMD's existed at the time of the invasion were either untimely, or fabricated, provoking America, as well as other world leaders, to instigate an invasion as the primary motive for the timing of the war.
Points the movie does neglect include:
1. Other motives for invasion and overthrow of the Saddam Hussein Regime included mass genocide, including use of WMD's, such as nerve agents.
2. Torture and mass murder were common in the country, under the government's sanction, and, sometimes, for entertainment of Hussein's sons and their companions.
3. Iraq presented a continued threat to the stability of the region and the peace of neighboring countries.
Necessary for the integrity of the movie script, and probably without question in most viewers' minds, is the issue that the levels of American Government, such as CIA, FBI, DOD and other acronyms do not always bear the same objectives. This is the hinge-pin of the movie's plot. It is noteworthy that no direct blame is placed upon the President Bush, other than the notion that he, and everyone else, was working under the misplaced understanding (inaccurate "intelligence" reports?) that WMD's still existed.
In the movie, two oppositional bureaucrats face-off, and have their own "rogue" military regiments that work under their influence. The notion that two different regiments could fall, unnoticed by their military commanders, into the hands of bureaucrats is rather untenable. Unfortunately, it gives the basis for the movie, and these two regiments begin their own war against each other. Matt Damon's character, Captain Miller becomes leader of one of these rogue regiments when his concerns are expressed that they are working on false intelligence, and these concerns are dismissed.
Over-all, the movie gives the impression that military agents in Iraq work largely unsupervised, or, are capable of evading supervision on a large scale, and violently lash-out at the Iraqi civilians who get in their way. There is no sense of a chain-of-command that is more than tenuous, or of the military discipline and honor that our troops are so-well known for.
Unlike the war movies done about the heroism of WW-II, which continue to serve as a documentary, of sorts, even in the fictionalized movies, this does not represent what happened in Iraq, either by the popular press, or the soldiers who have served there. Unfortunately, it may be included through the following years as a documentary of the American war experience in Iraq, which denigrates the nobility of our gentle warriors.
Just Thinking, The Sand Hill Philosopher
