[Peace-discuss] Chalmers Johnson on "Charlie Wilson's War"

[C. G. Estabrook]

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/print/174877/Tomgram%253A%2520%2520Chalmers%2520Johnson%252C%2520An%2520Imperialist%2520Comedy

[....]

One of the severe side effects of imperialism in its advanced stages
seems to be that it rots the brains of the imperialists. They start
believing that they are the bearers of civilization, the bringers of
light to "primitives" and "savages" (largely so identified because of
their resistance to being "liberated" by us), the carriers of science
and modernity to backward peoples, beacons and guides for citizens of
the "underdeveloped world."

[....]

When imperialist activities produce unmentionable outcomes, such as
those well known to anyone paying attention to Afghanistan since
about 1990, then ideological thinking kicks in. The horror story is
suppressed, or reinterpreted as something benign or ridiculous (a
"comedy"), or simply curtailed before the denouement becomes obvious.
Thus, for example, Melissa Roddy, a Los Angeles film-maker with
inside information from the Charlie Wilson production team,
<http://www.alternet.org/stories/71286/>notes that the film's happy
ending came about because Tom Hanks, a co-producer as well as the
leading actor, "just can't deal with this 9/11 thing."

[....]

The tendency of imperialism to rot the brains of imperialists is
particularly on display in the recent spate of articles and reviews
in mainstream American newspapers about the film. For reasons not
entirely clear, an overwhelming majority of reviewers concluded that
Charlie Wilson's War is a "feel-good comedy" (Lou Lumenick in the New
York Post), a "high-living, hard-partying jihad" (A.O. Scott in the
New York Times), "a sharp-edged, wickedly funny comedy" (Roger Ebert
in the Chicago Sun-Times). Stephen Hunter in the Washington Post
wrote of "Mike Nichols's laff-a-minute chronicle of the congressman's
crusade to ram funding through the House Appropriations Committee to
supply arms to the Afghan mujahideen"; while, in a piece entitled
"Sex! Drugs! (and Maybe a Little War)," Richard L. Berke in the New
York Times offered this
<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/movies/16berk.html?_r=1&oref=slogin> stamp
of approval: "You can make a movie that is relevant and intelligent
-- and palatable to a mass audience -- if its political pills are
sugar-coated."

[....]

My own view is that if Charlie Wilson's War is a comedy, it's the
kind that goes over well with a roomful of louts in a college
fraternity house. Simply put, it is imperialist propaganda and the
tragedy is that four-and-a-half years after we invaded Iraq and
destroyed it, such dangerously misleading nonsense is still being
offered to a gullible public. The most accurate review so far is
James Rocchi's summing-up for
<http://www.cinematical.com/2007/12/21/review-charlie-wilsons-war-jamess-take/> Cinematical:
"Charlie Wilson's War isn't just bad history; it feels even more
malign, like a conscious attempt to induce amnesia."  

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