Last night, I saw No End In Sight.
This film angers me anew. Sends chills down my spine in a way heretofore unfelt. To put it plainly, it is an outrage.
I'm beyond angry. Again. For the umpteenth time. The low-grade frustration that runs constantly in the back of my mind has again expanded and taken over. Less low-grade and constant, now migraine-esque and pervasive.
If you are at all concerned about the madness that we engage in every day in Iraq - without a plan, without experienced leaders who can make informed decisions - this is a movie you must see. It offers a look at exactly how the U.S. failed to plan for reconstruction in Iraq...every painful detail of decisions made by only a few, every painful moment of shock and disappointment felt by those who were trying to get it right but were usurped by the man.
The special features alone are worth your time. Really.
What I can't get out of my mind: the national treasures that were lost, looted, destroyed because they weren't protected by U.S. forces. The libraries, the museums, all the records for anyone who lived in Iraq, gone. Even after the Iraqi intelligentsia begged our leaders to protect these important locations, to preserve them for future generations of free Iraqis. What a slap in the face that we said we'd take care of it but protected the oil fields instead, eh? A further slap in the face (to Iraqis and Americans) is Donald Rumsfeld joking and smug when asked about the looting of such vital cultural locations: "How many vases can possibly be looted in such a country? Did they really have that many vases?"
Charles Ferguson, the film's director, has a rather interesting history. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from M.I.T...but spent the first part of his career creating the software wonder Front Page. After selling his tech company to Microsoft, he turned his attentions back to economic, political and social concerns - spending a few years as a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution.
He has written several books on technology & its effects on society, but No End in Sight: Iraq's Descent Into Chaos, due out in February, will be his first book on foreign policy. If the brief descriptions of it are correct, it will contain the interviews and insights that didn't make it into the film, as well as his own account of what it was like to work in Iraq while making the film. A snapshot of his making-the-film thoughts was up on The Huffington Post earlier this year.
It certainly puts the Mutanabbi Street Memorial Reading into perspective...
