Editor’s Note: This post offers our readers two additional views on the growing debate about Zero Dark Thirty, a film liable to win some Oscars this year. The first is by David Walsh, house critic at wsws.org, a socialist organization, and, for my money,  perhaps one of the most perceptive movie evaluators in the anglophone world. As a socialist, David brings to his readers the advantage of a sophisticated class analysis, a feature that, all by itself, makes his commentary that much more insightful than the rest. The second is by Jonathan Kim, critic for ReThink Reviews and the HuffPo. Here we deal with a liberal, with all the incomprehensible and exasperating myopias of that tribe, a social tier which, while blabbing criticism always strives to keep one foot firmly planted in the system. This posture inevitably leads to confusing statements like this (pay special attention to the bolded part):

Zero Dark Thirty ignores the fact that America’s torture program inspired anti-U.S. sentiment around the world, causing many to vow revenge on the U.S. and its allies. It ignores the fact that torture scandals like Abu Ghraib caused support for the U.S. occupation in Iraq to plummet, inflaming the insurgency, prolonging the fighting, and putting U.S. troops at increased risk. It ignores the possibly irreparable damage to America’s reputation as a country that respects the rule of law. It ignores the damage torture did to America’s relationships with its allies, who became reluctant to hand over possibly valuable detainees to the U.S. for fear of being accomplices to war crimes and were furious when the U.S. detained and tortured their citizens without charge. It ignores the fact that if CIA agents such as Maya and Dan — two of Zero Dark Thirty’s “heroes” — were actual people, they deserve to be tried and convicted as war criminals under international law for their unrepentant participation in the torture of detainees.

You may wonder what I can possibly object to in the above para, which looks and smells like an impeccable call to support the nation’s highest moral standards.  At the risk of sounding picayune, that’s precisely what sticks in my craw, and it happens often when dealing with the liberals’ version of America’s history. Kim does not seem to realise that it’s been a very very long time (if ever) that America truly respected the rule of law, especially in foreign affairs, as opposed to the simulacrum thereof.  While the brainwashed —among which I naturally include liberals, not to mention the countless fucktards that America incubates by the millions— may think that Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and Mr Bushoma’s sneaky wars and invasions have done “irreparable damage to the (supposedly) sterling reputation of the United States,” we must offer the following correction: You can’t damage what doesn’t exist. On that basis I must conclude that what Kim is actually deploring is the fact the shocking revelations about torture and other inconvenient subjects have damaged the propaganda image the US ruling circles have carefully cultivated for more than a century. Their dismantlement should be cause for celebration, not concern.

Second, while the debate rages, most critics like Kim continue to take at face value the notion that Pres. Obama ended all torture. This is entirely false. Torture in one form or another continues, and will go on till the rotten but extremely hypocritical imperial system is defeated globally. That will only happen when America finally becomes a real democracy instead of a plutocracy pretending to be one. Third, if the ruling cliques based in Washington are a criminal enterprise, and in my view they are, why should we lament that other countries will now fail to collaborate with it?—P. Greanville

••••••
Director Kathryn Bigelow defends her indefensible Zero Dark Thirty
wsws.org

Director Kathryn Bigelow took to the pages of the Los Angeles Times Tuesday to defend her pro-CIA film Zero Dark Thirty which has provoked opposition inside and outside the film industry. Bigelow’s column, which reveals her as a slavish admirer of the US intelligence and military apparatus, only sinks her—deservedly—deeper in the mire.

The filmmaker and her screenwriter Mark Boal, in their political blindness and misreading of the current state of American public opinion, thought they could get away with murder, as it were. They assumed that wide layers of the population would be as excited as they were by contact with torturers and assassins and would be enthused about a version of events essentially told by the latter. They were mistaken in this.

Bigelow now finds herself in the unenviable position of claiming that her film, which clearly offers a justification for torture and other war crimes, does not advocate torture. One can only conclude from her ludicrous and incoherent LA Times piece that Bigelow was unprepared for criticism and protest.

The filmmaker begins by noting that her goal had been “to make a modern, rigorous film about counter-terrorism, centered on one of the most important and classified missions in American history.” She acknowledges that she started, in other words, by accepting everything that any serious artist would have subjected to criticism and questioning.

Bigelow betrays no interest (in the LA Times or in her movie) in the history of US intervention in the Middle East and Central Asia over the course of decades, of the CIA’s relations with Osama bin Laden and other Islamist elements in Afghanistan and elsewhere from the late 1970s onward, of the first war on Iraq in 1990-91, of Washington’s support for the oppression of the Palestinians, or, for that matter, of the murky events leading up to and surrounding the 9/11 attacks. In general, Bigelow indicates a lack of concern with anything that might disrupt her tale of “counterterrorism” and its courageous warriors.

The award-winning director presents herself in the following manner: “As a lifelong pacifist, I support all protests against the use of torture, and, quite simply, inhumane treatment of any kind.” As a devotee of counterterrorism and classified military-intelligence missions, Bigelow has already indicated that she is a unique sort of “pacifist,” but there is more to come.

She then notes disingenuously, “But I do wonder if some of the sentiments alternately [?] expressed about the film might be more appropriately directed at those who instituted and ordered these U.S. policies, as opposed to a motion picture that brings the story to the screen.” As it turns out, although Bigelow apparently hasn’t noticed it, such sentiments have been directed at those who instituted and ordered these criminal US policies for more than a decade.

Bigelow eventually gets to the heart of her argument, which has been echoed by such apologists as filmmaker Michael Moore: “Those of us who work in the arts know that depiction is not endorsement. If it was, no artist would be able to paint inhumane practices, no author could write about them, and no filmmaker could delve into the thorny subjects of our time.”

Driving home the point, she asserts that “confusing depiction with endorsement is the first step toward chilling any American artist’s ability and right to shine a light on dark deeds, especially when those deeds are cloaked in layers of secrecy and government obfuscation.”

Something important is revealed here about a generation or generations of artists and semi-intellectuals nourished on post-structuralism and postmodernism, cold, empty “conceptual art” and social indifference, and made affluent as a by-product of the stock and art market booms and related economic trends of the past several decades.
No, depiction is not endorsement, as though anyone with a brain would ever suggest that it was. However, whether the representation of torture and other inhumane acts amounts to endorsement, on the one hand, or criticism and outrage, on the other, depends on the artistic treatment (context, juxtaposition of images, the artist’s attitude) in the given instance.

In the case of Zero Dark Thirty, the evidence is clear. The film begins, as the WSWS review noted, with “a dark screen and a sound track of fire fighters’ radio calls and frantic cries for help from the upper floors of the Twin Towers on 9/11 … The juxtaposition of the 9/11 soundtrack and the harrowing scenes of torture are presented as cause and effect, with one justifying the other.”

Zero Dark Thirty was created with the intimate collaboration of the CIA, the Defense Department and the Obama White House (including the personal intervention of John Brennan, formerly the chief of the drones assassination program and current nominee for the post of CIA director). It tells its tale from the point of view of a female CIA operative.

As was the case with The Hurt Locker (2008), where the central figures were US soldiers in Iraq, Bigelow concentrates in her latest work on how exhausting and difficult it is to be a victimizer. There is no indication that Jessica Chastain’s Maya seriously questions her work or that she would not preside over the same horrific acts in the future.

The suggestion that critics of her film are not “adult” enough to deal with the world’s unpleasantness or, as Bigelow puts it in her LA Times piece, are “ignoring or denying the role it [torture] played in US counter-terrorism policy and practices,” is another cynical effort to divert attention.

Films dealt with the most nightmarish events in history, including Nazism and the Holocaust, long before Bigelow picked up a film camera.

For instance, Roberto Rossellini’s Rome, Open City (1945) includes scenes of Gestapo torture of Italian resistance fighters and Gillo Pontecorvo’s Battle of Algiers (1966) depicts the torture of Algerians at the hands of the French colonialist military. A more recent work, Ken Loach’s The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006) vividly shows the British military torturing Irish republican detainees.

The important difference, of course, is that Rossellini, Pontecorvo and Loach, through their dramas, offered an indictment of the torturers and the forces that stood behind them, whereas Bigelow’s film takes the side, with whatever qualms, of the oppressors.

Other, better films on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have dealt with the brutalities of those conflicts. Gavin Hood’s Rendition (2007), commented the WSWS, “depicts unflinchingly the simulated drowning technique now known to the entire world as ‘waterboarding,’ as well as the beating and electrocution of the torture victim.” However, Hood’s film, a protest against US policy, met with a generally hostile reception from the media, which criticized the movie for its “slanted” and “one-sided” and “deck-stacking” arguments.

Philip Haas’ The Situation (2006), Nick Broomfield’s Battle for Haditha (2007) and Paul Haggis’ In the Valley of Elah (2007) were serious efforts that did not shy away from the realities of the US invasions, nor did the documentaries Gunner Palace (2004), The Prisoner or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair (2006), How to Fold a Flag (2009), all co-directed by Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein, Taxi to the Dark Side (2007), directed by Alex Gibney, and Standard Operating Procedure (2008), directed by Errol Morris. For the most part, the US media saw to it that these films, critical of American policy, were buried.

Bigelow concludes her piece in Tuesday’s LA Times by paying sycophantic tribute (a cruder expression comes to mind) to the American military and CIA. “We should never forget,” she writes, “the brave work of those professionals in the military and intelligence communities who paid the ultimate price in the effort to combat a grave threat to this nation’s safety and security.” Bin Laden, we are told, “was defeated by ordinary Americans who fought bravely even as they sometimes crossed moral lines, who labored greatly and intently, who gave all of themselves in both victory and defeat, in life and in death, for the defense of this nation.”

The “brave professionals” in the CIA and military, the “defense of the nation”! Who writes and speaks in this manner? This is the language of the extreme right. Bigelow is appealing to and aligning herself with quasi-fascistic elements.

But this is the trajectory of the social element she speaks for and to. Perhaps not entirely happy about torture and assassination, which may even disturb its sleep for an hour or two, this upper middle class layer instinctively identifies the defense of its wealth and privilege with US military operations around the globe. There is no other way to explain a work as repugnant as Zero Dark Thirty or a “defense of the indefensible” as crude and transparent as Bigelow’s.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
wsws.org site is an information arm of the Socialist Equality Party.

••••

Take Two

Jonathan Kim, Film Critic for ReThink Reviews and the Uprising Show
A Response to Kathryn Bigelow’s Latest Statement on Zero Dark Thirty and Torture

Dear Kathryn Bigelow,

I read your January 15 response in the Los Angeles Times to people like myself who have said that Zero Dark Thirty endorses torture. I would like to address it.

1. Do you believe that torture is an effective way to obtain accurate information?
2.    Do you believe torture was used to gain accurate information that led to finding Osama bin Laden? If so, who told you that? Did they provide any evidence?

5.    Do you feel that if characters such as Maya and Dan were real people that they should be charged as war criminals for torturing detainees?

7.    How do you define torture?

9.    What is your response to pro-torture pundits like Sean Hannity who cite Zero Dark Thirty as evidence that information obtained through torture helped find bin Laden, and that the U.S. should be free to torture in the future for reasons of national security?

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Follow Jonathan Kim on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ReThinkReviews

 

By Pinko the Bear

I LIKE YOU MICHELLE OBAMA. You seem like a nice lady, good wife and good mother. By the way Michelle, Happy Mother’s Day. I hope your family shows you a little love and appreciation for all you do. Go ahead and enjoy it, you most likey deserve it. That said, I am spending part of my Mother’s Day responding to your words at the commencement address you gave yesterday at the University of Northern Iowa, and I have a bone to pick with you. A couple of bones, actually. Shall the picking begin?

I think it was very nice of you to take your time to visit them, wish them well in the working world -as if they will be able to find jobs – and to offer some motherly advice. It was sweet of you to recall how you had been received in Iowa just a few years ago while on the campaign trail for you fabulously energizing, charasmatic, hopeful and sincere sounding husband.

“People didn’t know a thing about me, yet they listened. They asked questions. They gave me the benefit of the doubt and a chance to show who I was. And that’s because people here in Iowa understand that everyone has something to offer.”

Yes, we didn’t know anything about you or your husband, really, so we listened. We were interested and then inspired. We were enthralled, enchanted and energized. You say Iowan’s gave you a chance to “show” who you were. Minor point here, but you only “told” us who you were and we were sold. Which brings me to my point. The bone picking part.

You told this graduating class and the other attendees, some 16,000 strong, that the military specialists that killed OBL showed the “very essence” of public service. Hmmm. Really?

I always thought public service meant something much different. My firefighters are public servants. The parks and recreation employees are public servants. EMT’s and ambulance drivers are public servants. The city mangager, city council, the folks at the city water works are public servants. The people who make sure my traffic lights turn red, yellow and green in the correct order, thereby actually keeping us safe, are public servants.

But military folk? Public servants? Perhaps those working in the VA or the Coast Gaurd are rightfully pegged as public servants. But trained killers? Assassination squads? People who sign up to kill foriegners for a steady paycheck, a promise of higher education and lifelong healthcare benefits are public servants? I think not. The only service they are providing is private. They serve private capital only. They serve capitalists only. They serve the well born, the well bred, the well to do and the closely held aggregated wealth of the ruling class. Must we go through an exhaustive review of all the ways the hired muscle has been used? Why don’t we just take a paragraph or two from General Smedley Butler?

“War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small ‘inside’ group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.”

or maybe this one?

“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”

No Michelle. Hired killers for private enterprise is not the “very essence” of “public service” And before you try to make the laughable argument that these men and women in uniform overseas are “keeping us safe” – oops, you already did – you might want to consider what the internal documents say about the consequences of invading and occupying other countries. These wars do not lead to increased safety at home. These wars lead to the killing of innocent men, women and children abroad. These wars have the complete opposite effect on the aggrieved populations than that which is propagated by progandists, regularly repeated and amply amplified by the fully faithful and completly complacent corporate mega-media conglomerates. Too much alliteration? Let me retry in a pithy sort of way. Killing people abroad creates blowback at home. 9-11 ring a bell? To hear you actually say otherwise shows us who you are. You told us who you were in Iowa a few years ago. Now we see who you are when you say things like this.

“Just imagine, a small group of brave men, dropped by helicopter, half a world away in the dead of night into unknown danger inside the lair of the most wanted man in the world. They did not hesitate, risking everything for us, for our freedom and security. And they did it not just as Navy SEALs. They did it as husbands, as fathers, as sons. Their families were back here, with no idea of their mission or whether their loved one would ever come home.”

I agree they are taking risks. I agree they are husbands, fathers and sons. Wives, mothers and daughters too. Interesting that your speechwriter left them out. I agree their families were back here, with no idea of their mission or whether their loved one would ever come home. But to say that they are doing this for our “freedom and security” is a bald faced lie, propaganda, and you should be ashamed of yourself for saying such a thing.

Were the kids sent to die in Viet Nam fighting for freedom and security? Were the soldiers sent to Central and South America by Reagan securing our freedom and keeping us safe? How about the Phillipines? Cuba? Haiti? Has there ever been a time when the Commander in Chief sent US citizens to risk life and limb in the protection of our freedoms and security? Ok, maybe the War of 1812, when we were actually invaded and attacked here at home by a foreign army. But since then, Michelle? Readers? The question answers itself.

The last bone to pick is your call to the graduating class to “public service”. Yes. That sounds so very nice. Public Service. Public Servants. Very nice, indeed. Those kids, however, need to be clear on the meaning. As I pointed out above, being a warrior, a paid assasin, is not public service. It serves private corporate interests, needs and profits. Yes, public money is used to pay the troops, but that alone is not enough to qualify them as public servants. The qualifier is not who pays them, but who they are paid to serve. To implore these fresh graduates to explore public service after you had just painted public service as something it is not, is unnaceptable to me. Why didn’t you just tell it to them straight?

Our Empire is creating more and more people that need killin’ and we need your help. You are deeply in debt and have to get a job. There are no decent jobs for you since we have allowed deregulation and outsourcing to decimate the economy here at home. You should consider going to see a recruiter. We need more officers in our Empire as we have plans for even more expansion. The Empire is hiring! You are less free here at home (think Patriot Act) and certainly less secure as unemployed civillians. Well, you will be sorta’ free and sorta’ secure if you agree to work for Uncle Sam as part of the PEP or Peasent Extermination Program. Sign up now! Multi-Nationals need you and you need a job!

Michelle, that would have been the truth. What you gave those kids was pure propaganda. I will never say anything about your efforts to get kids off the couch, excercising or eating healthier foods. But I’ll be damned if I can sit by and say nothing as you prod the young into the service of the Empire. Shame on you for telling other mother’s children such rubbish. Do you not know what the Mother’s Day Proclamation of 1870 by Julia Ward Howe said?

Arise then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be of water or of tears!

“Say firmly: ‘We will not have questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us reeking of carnage for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy, and patience. We women of one country will be too tender to those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. From the bosom of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own, it says “Disarm! Disarm!” The sword of murder is not the balance of justice. Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession.’

“As men have forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after his time the sacred impress not of Caesar, but of God.

“In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.”

With more truthfulness in the future, there will be more happy mothers on future Mother’s Days!

go here to see the original AP

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gB4NM2JBKyYu3ezrMCo0ZYlO1g6Q?docId=3e0e8a70a9d747c8925c315847c8c2b6

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