I'm experiencing cognitive dissonance as our pre-eminent antiwar voice recommends a war movie that only shows atrocities committed by the Russian side while ignoring the atrocities known to have been committed by the Ukrainian side. This war will only end when the west stops sending weapons to Ukraine. But the continued highlighting of Russian atrocities in the western media will only make it more difficult for western leaders to stop arming Ukraine and enter meaningful security negotiations with Russia.
What this film dismisses which creates more harm then good is that it is a war that is driven by a neocon agenda, a US agenda, and the only take away will be that Russian's are bad. How could Hedges have over looked that.
If I wanted hysterical propaganda about real or alleged Russian atrocities, I could turn on literally any MSM channel and get all I want. Ditto, fairly tales of Ukrainian victimhood and heroism.
The double irony is that the said antiwar activist admits that yes, poor widdle Ukraine and its Nazi paramilitaries are far from blameless little lambs.
There are literally hundreds of other videos out there, of Mariupol residents thanking the Russian troops for delivering them from the regime in Kiev, of locals berating the cameramen for their supposed support of the regime, etc..
When people see this film, and the true horror of war, it is the Ukrainians that are slaughtered and suffering, not the Russians, so what is the take away from people who see it? Americans will see that the Russians are evil and bad, even though we are the instigators of this war and it is a neocon driven agenda that fuels it. We've also had a lot of practice in this 21st century in destroying millions of lives based on the same agenda.
Thank you for your summary of this important film. However, I don't think I could bear to watch it. I have been reading Ian Morris's book "Why the West Rules for Now." His excursions into human history are filled with so much unspeakable brutality that I can't help but wonder if there is something fundamentally wrong with the human brain.
Compared to? The British Empire where the sun never sets? The US Empire of Immanent Domain and takeover of the Blue Water Empire of former Conquistador Spain? The Dutch East Indies Corporation? The Belgium Congo? The Portuguese slave trade and Brazil? The French Empire of Haiti, Indo China and Africa? The Hudson Bay Corporation charter for all of Canada? All have a Bloody History so too the term "Blood Money". Personified in the first successful slave uprising in Haiti after which Napoleon's gun ships forced them into repayment for their stolen bodies from their "lawful" owners. Paying back a "reparation" to them paying interest to the Rothchild bankers right up until WW2. I haven't even mentioned the British Narco drug cartels and American white traders of Opium or the smashing of the boxer rebellion. Or the US dropping of 2 nukes on a civilian population not once but twice or Perry's gunships that opened up Japan!
Only "war movie" that ever seemed without bias to me was actually the post–nuclear war movie, "On the Beach" because, without any finger-pointing, it blamed the collective stupidity of humanity for the outcome of wide-scale death and devastation, in that instance, human extinction.
Same with the old movie "Planet of the Apes", but both are kind of biased, IMO, because they show the the stupidity of mankind but not the other side of our humanity, namely, the good things that we have done. My favorite Vietnam war movie is "Platoon" which shows what Mr. Hedges calls the pornography of war but with the purpose of teaching a good lesson.
War is a form of insanity with no good guys. No matter how hard people like Mr. Hedges try to get that point across it will always fall on a large portion of deaf ears. e.g. reporting one side is propoganda. [No understanding that the reporter has to survive]
What about WWII. Hitler didn't give anyone a choice. The Russians endured the greatest losses to stop this madman and his fascist ideology. This war, the war in Ukraine is a US driven war in order to bring Russia down. This administration doesn't care how many Ukranians die, how many Russians die, and is simply a neocon driven war, much like our many wars in the Middle East where millions died, and millions were displaced, was based on an agenda written up in the late 1990's. To get started they said all they needed was a new Pearl Harbor, and of course they got it on 9/11. The most disgusting actor, the real destructive force in this war is the USA. Do you really think there were no good guys in the Middle East?
"they say all they needed was a new Pearl Harbor, and of course they got that on 9/11" and then they destroyed the one country, Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9/11. In the current war the stakes are much higher. If U.S continues cornering Russia we could end up with a nuclear war and mankind be destroyed. The neocons will gain nothing and our president won't need to buy a good denture fixative. No good, no good.
I don't know why you should think I am not familiar with Hedges. I am. A movie that shows the realities of war and doesn't glorify it, great. However this movie shows what is going on in Ukraine and the carnage that Russia is causing. That's the focus. Now an American audience goes to see this movie, maybe, but they will come away with a feeling already instilled in them by the good old USA, and that attitude will be how disgusting those Russians are, but they will never hear how we want this war, or how we encouraged this war, and we did it because we want to bring Putin and Russia down, down, down. They won't hear, or know about our neocon agenda that also destroyed whole Middle Eastern countries and millions of people, which is also driving this war. They will simply come away with an attitude which has already been instilled in them, Russia bad, Putin bad, disgusting that Trump wanted to get along with them. Savages. It is not enough to acknowledge the realities of what is going on, but it makes no difference because people will only come away from this film with more hate for Russia, and no doubt support for this carnage. I was very active in the anti-war movement that eventually went no where and Hedges even spoke at my congregation and I've heard him speak any number of times. Don't tell me I don't know where he is coming from.
If you live in the US you must be aware of the degree of hatred people have for Russia even without this war. We even cultivated that hate with the lie that Russians put Trump in the White House, making him illegitimate. People like Amy Goodman even bought the lie and sold it on her show I use to listen to. This is a necon driven war that wants the end of Putin and wants to drive Russia into the ground. Remember the Mujahideen we used to keep the war going in Afghanistan and we accomplished our goal and brought Russia to her knees. This film no matter it's good intentions in showing the horrors of war will further the propaganda that Russia has got to go which exactly what Biden and his neocon cronies will appreciate.
So true in the American thought process. I remember the huge success of the movie "Billie Jack" and the peaceful anti Vietnam war hippies that couldn't or wouldn't fight back against MAGA like patriotic small town KKK Chamber of Commerce business men. I was about 15 years old in Canada and the only thing most people got was the power of Karate and violence with the end result of Martial Arts schools popping up everywhere. Peace lost and capitalism won out again!
“Stories I wrote for The New York Times documenting Bosnian Serb atrocities were used as evidence in the International Court in the Hague to prosecute war criminals.”
And stories that reported the false flag mass murder of Bosnian Muslims by Alija Izetbegovic, a Bosnian Muslim leader were never to be reported or come to light in western media.
The Bosnian Serbs were successfully prosecuted for crimes against humanity based on corpses and 2nd hand testimony, because there was no first-hand documentation. No pictures, only multiple selective witness testimony, which is either a low bar for International Criminal Court prosecutorial standards or an orchestrated effort to push a preferred narrative.
I refer anyone interested in the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia, and the subsequent NATO bombing of Bosnian Serbs to Queen of Chaos: The Misadventures of Hillary Clinton by Diana Johnstone.
Before the invasion, People's Republics in Donbas, mostly Russians under civil war and genocidal policies had chosen Russia as opposed to the attackers from Kiev (8 years of attacks), and today Mariuopol is practically rebuilt with many new schools, hospitals and a contented population with real jobs that were not possible with the gross hostilities against them with over 18thousand dead over 8 years. Hundreds of youtube videos for a reality check about Maruipol and Crimea as well.
Not to be contrarian, because I do understand the point, but there are great war films if you go back before war was purely a corporate endeavor.
The difference is that when war is treated as satire, (Strangelove, Mash), it ceases to shock but it makes us think. So do ‘Paths of Glory’, ‘The Grand Illusion’, and ‘Apocalypse Now’.
I believe in the power of Art. But we won’t be seeing either sort of film so long as the Pentagon demands script approval at the expense of material assistance. Saving Private Ryan, is the result.
All wars are crimes against humanity. In our cursed days, the heads of state of the US, Russia, and Ukraine are guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and likewise all their co-conspirators hiding in corrupt judiciaries, in corrupt legislatures, and especially the salivating ghouls managing their death cult military corporations that have monetized and commodified human corpses into their filthy lucre, reeking of the blood slaughter their hellish flesh grinding profits have produced. They have cursed themselves. They have written their names into the Cosmic Annals of Infamy.
Given all these comments, when is protest for Peace going to become so massive around the White House and relentlessly so present that Biden becomes sufficiently hounded into submitting to a peace deal? Or are the commentators here against the ugly mayhem just in it for the discussion? To blow off steam?what tips people out of their inertia to act? Purposefully and with discipline?
Some of the most graphic anti war book/movies are "Johnny Got His Gun" "Catch 22" "The Naked and the Dead" "All is quiet on the Western Front" "Storm of Steel". Hypocrisy oozes from and between the pages. The best book about the beginning's of the Military's Industrial Complex is "The Merchants of Death" about WW1 war profiteers that gave wealth to the Power Elite that controls the US to this day. It should be a documentary. One snippet describes how the German bomb makers sued the British government for patent law violation because they reversed engineered German fuses. The Germans won the case! That in a nut shell describes the Machiavellian Corporate use of power and influence.
Apparently John Mearsheimer and Norman Finkelstein - whom I greatly admire -have said they support the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This is unfortunate because, while they are correct in acknowledging the enormous role of U.S.A. in antagonizing Russia into invading, it still amounts to an armchair general mentality common in academia. In war one side can be more vicious and brutal towards civilians, say - but, with rare exceptions, the madness of war is a contagion that no soldier or many civilians are inoculated against. The bifurcation of a conflict into good vs. bad { an American favourite } only appears coherent from a safe distance. The WWII film Come And See does an excellent job of conveying the effects of this contagion, as it infects a young Belarusian man/boy and the viewer watches it takes it's course; eventually turning him into a haggard old man. But Come And See also presents all of the German invaders as phantasmagoric monsters - which, no doubt many were. But, as history has shown, some of them were actually decent people swept up in the historical moment - Carl Ludwig "Luz" Long is one example. War "makes the good better and the bad worse."
Your comments are insightful. It seems we, those at home, spared from the ravages of war, lack the imagination to understand the horror of war. As often as we’re told, we still fail to comprehend. Too many are eager to wave the flag and many, too young, to truly understand are ready to sign away their souls to “defend freedom” and other lies perpetrated by a government corrupted by the economics of war and the greed of arms dealers.
Not being one who prays, I yet pray for the day there are no war movies, as there are no more wars!
Horrors of war are known. Real situation with people cultures, desires of Eastern citizens, their history, etc are not known, despite public media accessible. The public (US citizens do not want to know, because they are afraid of being accused of being an enemy or traitor to the NATO machine that is behind the horrors of war. Investigations of the "atrocities" and who has committed them have not happened. History of that area and why the millions have chosen another path from Zelensky is still heavily censored.
I'm experiencing cognitive dissonance as our pre-eminent antiwar voice recommends a war movie that only shows atrocities committed by the Russian side while ignoring the atrocities known to have been committed by the Ukrainian side. This war will only end when the west stops sending weapons to Ukraine. But the continued highlighting of Russian atrocities in the western media will only make it more difficult for western leaders to stop arming Ukraine and enter meaningful security negotiations with Russia.
What this film dismisses which creates more harm then good is that it is a war that is driven by a neocon agenda, a US agenda, and the only take away will be that Russian's are bad. How could Hedges have over looked that.
Idk what you want. Hedges said the film does not present both sides' attrocities, but that it shows the horrors of war accurately.
Read my response of why I don't like this on other people's responses to what I said.
If I wanted hysterical propaganda about real or alleged Russian atrocities, I could turn on literally any MSM channel and get all I want. Ditto, fairly tales of Ukrainian victimhood and heroism.
The double irony is that the said antiwar activist admits that yes, poor widdle Ukraine and its Nazi paramilitaries are far from blameless little lambs.
There are literally hundreds of other videos out there, of Mariupol residents thanking the Russian troops for delivering them from the regime in Kiev, of locals berating the cameramen for their supposed support of the regime, etc..
You can watch a movie from the ukrainian side showing the horror of this war and still believe that the west is fueling this conflict.
Should reporters show/tell us what they are seeing or should they craft a narrative to achieve a hoped-for result?
They should reflect reality and reality is never one sided.
Though it is hard to be sure, I suspect Ukrainian reporters would have been most unwelcome behind the Russian lines.
When people see this film, and the true horror of war, it is the Ukrainians that are slaughtered and suffering, not the Russians, so what is the take away from people who see it? Americans will see that the Russians are evil and bad, even though we are the instigators of this war and it is a neocon driven agenda that fuels it. We've also had a lot of practice in this 21st century in destroying millions of lives based on the same agenda.
But if the film reports only one side, isn't it propaganda in the service of war?
Thank you for your summary of this important film. However, I don't think I could bear to watch it. I have been reading Ian Morris's book "Why the West Rules for Now." His excursions into human history are filled with so much unspeakable brutality that I can't help but wonder if there is something fundamentally wrong with the human brain.
Power is to sociopaths what catnip is to cats.
Agreed. But my cats love both power and catnip.
Most of us like both.
I have wondered the same thing and esp. about Western brains.
Do you really want to start going down the racial path?
The bloody history of China is second to none, though the worst is far in the past.
Compared to? The British Empire where the sun never sets? The US Empire of Immanent Domain and takeover of the Blue Water Empire of former Conquistador Spain? The Dutch East Indies Corporation? The Belgium Congo? The Portuguese slave trade and Brazil? The French Empire of Haiti, Indo China and Africa? The Hudson Bay Corporation charter for all of Canada? All have a Bloody History so too the term "Blood Money". Personified in the first successful slave uprising in Haiti after which Napoleon's gun ships forced them into repayment for their stolen bodies from their "lawful" owners. Paying back a "reparation" to them paying interest to the Rothchild bankers right up until WW2. I haven't even mentioned the British Narco drug cartels and American white traders of Opium or the smashing of the boxer rebellion. Or the US dropping of 2 nukes on a civilian population not once but twice or Perry's gunships that opened up Japan!
This reminded me of Carol Ann Duffy’s poem “War Photographer.”
War Photographer
Carol Ann Duffy
In his dark room he is finally alone
with spools of suffering set out in ordered rows.
The only light is red and softly glows,
as though this were a church and he
a priest preparing to intone a Mass.
Belfast. Beirut. Phnom Penh. All flesh is grass.
He has a job to do. Solutions slop in trays
beneath his hands, which did not tremble then
though seem to now. Rural England. Home again
to ordinary pain which simple weather can dispel,
to fields which don’t explode beneath the feet
of running children in a nightmare heat.
Something is happening. A stranger’s features
faintly start to twist before his eyes,
a half-formed ghost. He remembers the cries
of this man’s wife, how he sought approval
without words to do what someone must
and how the blood stained into foreign dust.
A hundred agonies in black and white
from which his editor will pick out five or six
for Sunday’s supplement. The reader’s eyeballs prick
with tears between the bath and pre-lunch beers.
From the aeroplane he stares impassively at where
he earns his living and they do not care.
Only "war movie" that ever seemed without bias to me was actually the post–nuclear war movie, "On the Beach" because, without any finger-pointing, it blamed the collective stupidity of humanity for the outcome of wide-scale death and devastation, in that instance, human extinction.
Same with the old movie "Planet of the Apes", but both are kind of biased, IMO, because they show the the stupidity of mankind but not the other side of our humanity, namely, the good things that we have done. My favorite Vietnam war movie is "Platoon" which shows what Mr. Hedges calls the pornography of war but with the purpose of teaching a good lesson.
War is a form of insanity with no good guys. No matter how hard people like Mr. Hedges try to get that point across it will always fall on a large portion of deaf ears. e.g. reporting one side is propoganda. [No understanding that the reporter has to survive]
What about WWII. Hitler didn't give anyone a choice. The Russians endured the greatest losses to stop this madman and his fascist ideology. This war, the war in Ukraine is a US driven war in order to bring Russia down. This administration doesn't care how many Ukranians die, how many Russians die, and is simply a neocon driven war, much like our many wars in the Middle East where millions died, and millions were displaced, was based on an agenda written up in the late 1990's. To get started they said all they needed was a new Pearl Harbor, and of course they got it on 9/11. The most disgusting actor, the real destructive force in this war is the USA. Do you really think there were no good guys in the Middle East?
"they say all they needed was a new Pearl Harbor, and of course they got that on 9/11" and then they destroyed the one country, Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9/11. In the current war the stakes are much higher. If U.S continues cornering Russia we could end up with a nuclear war and mankind be destroyed. The neocons will gain nothing and our president won't need to buy a good denture fixative. No good, no good.
Fran, you are proving his point. I suggest you read more of Hedges' work to see where he is coming from.
I don't know why you should think I am not familiar with Hedges. I am. A movie that shows the realities of war and doesn't glorify it, great. However this movie shows what is going on in Ukraine and the carnage that Russia is causing. That's the focus. Now an American audience goes to see this movie, maybe, but they will come away with a feeling already instilled in them by the good old USA, and that attitude will be how disgusting those Russians are, but they will never hear how we want this war, or how we encouraged this war, and we did it because we want to bring Putin and Russia down, down, down. They won't hear, or know about our neocon agenda that also destroyed whole Middle Eastern countries and millions of people, which is also driving this war. They will simply come away with an attitude which has already been instilled in them, Russia bad, Putin bad, disgusting that Trump wanted to get along with them. Savages. It is not enough to acknowledge the realities of what is going on, but it makes no difference because people will only come away from this film with more hate for Russia, and no doubt support for this carnage. I was very active in the anti-war movement that eventually went no where and Hedges even spoke at my congregation and I've heard him speak any number of times. Don't tell me I don't know where he is coming from.
Hedges said what this film does really well and mentioned that it is one sided in showing atrocities. Idk what the problem is.
Maybe you judge all films based how other people might interpret them...
If you live in the US you must be aware of the degree of hatred people have for Russia even without this war. We even cultivated that hate with the lie that Russians put Trump in the White House, making him illegitimate. People like Amy Goodman even bought the lie and sold it on her show I use to listen to. This is a necon driven war that wants the end of Putin and wants to drive Russia into the ground. Remember the Mujahideen we used to keep the war going in Afghanistan and we accomplished our goal and brought Russia to her knees. This film no matter it's good intentions in showing the horrors of war will further the propaganda that Russia has got to go which exactly what Biden and his neocon cronies will appreciate.
How do you think the average American will interpret this? https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60695465
So true in the American thought process. I remember the huge success of the movie "Billie Jack" and the peaceful anti Vietnam war hippies that couldn't or wouldn't fight back against MAGA like patriotic small town KKK Chamber of Commerce business men. I was about 15 years old in Canada and the only thing most people got was the power of Karate and violence with the end result of Martial Arts schools popping up everywhere. Peace lost and capitalism won out again!
dont go down the fran rabbit hole. save yourself.
More accurately, that would be "trillions"....and also would be "misplaced", not displaced.
Thank you for making this point Lance.
“Stories I wrote for The New York Times documenting Bosnian Serb atrocities were used as evidence in the International Court in the Hague to prosecute war criminals.”
And stories that reported the false flag mass murder of Bosnian Muslims by Alija Izetbegovic, a Bosnian Muslim leader were never to be reported or come to light in western media.
The Bosnian Serbs were successfully prosecuted for crimes against humanity based on corpses and 2nd hand testimony, because there was no first-hand documentation. No pictures, only multiple selective witness testimony, which is either a low bar for International Criminal Court prosecutorial standards or an orchestrated effort to push a preferred narrative.
I refer anyone interested in the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia, and the subsequent NATO bombing of Bosnian Serbs to Queen of Chaos: The Misadventures of Hillary Clinton by Diana Johnstone.
Before the invasion, People's Republics in Donbas, mostly Russians under civil war and genocidal policies had chosen Russia as opposed to the attackers from Kiev (8 years of attacks), and today Mariuopol is practically rebuilt with many new schools, hospitals and a contented population with real jobs that were not possible with the gross hostilities against them with over 18thousand dead over 8 years. Hundreds of youtube videos for a reality check about Maruipol and Crimea as well.
Not to be contrarian, because I do understand the point, but there are great war films if you go back before war was purely a corporate endeavor.
The difference is that when war is treated as satire, (Strangelove, Mash), it ceases to shock but it makes us think. So do ‘Paths of Glory’, ‘The Grand Illusion’, and ‘Apocalypse Now’.
I believe in the power of Art. But we won’t be seeing either sort of film so long as the Pentagon demands script approval at the expense of material assistance. Saving Private Ryan, is the result.
"Pentagon Approved" should be required in advertising and credits for such films.
All wars are crimes against humanity. In our cursed days, the heads of state of the US, Russia, and Ukraine are guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and likewise all their co-conspirators hiding in corrupt judiciaries, in corrupt legislatures, and especially the salivating ghouls managing their death cult military corporations that have monetized and commodified human corpses into their filthy lucre, reeking of the blood slaughter their hellish flesh grinding profits have produced. They have cursed themselves. They have written their names into the Cosmic Annals of Infamy.
Incredible writing as always Chris.
Given all these comments, when is protest for Peace going to become so massive around the White House and relentlessly so present that Biden becomes sufficiently hounded into submitting to a peace deal? Or are the commentators here against the ugly mayhem just in it for the discussion? To blow off steam?what tips people out of their inertia to act? Purposefully and with discipline?
Some of the most graphic anti war book/movies are "Johnny Got His Gun" "Catch 22" "The Naked and the Dead" "All is quiet on the Western Front" "Storm of Steel". Hypocrisy oozes from and between the pages. The best book about the beginning's of the Military's Industrial Complex is "The Merchants of Death" about WW1 war profiteers that gave wealth to the Power Elite that controls the US to this day. It should be a documentary. One snippet describes how the German bomb makers sued the British government for patent law violation because they reversed engineered German fuses. The Germans won the case! That in a nut shell describes the Machiavellian Corporate use of power and influence.
Don’t forget Kurt Vonnegut’s books.
Apparently John Mearsheimer and Norman Finkelstein - whom I greatly admire -have said they support the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This is unfortunate because, while they are correct in acknowledging the enormous role of U.S.A. in antagonizing Russia into invading, it still amounts to an armchair general mentality common in academia. In war one side can be more vicious and brutal towards civilians, say - but, with rare exceptions, the madness of war is a contagion that no soldier or many civilians are inoculated against. The bifurcation of a conflict into good vs. bad { an American favourite } only appears coherent from a safe distance. The WWII film Come And See does an excellent job of conveying the effects of this contagion, as it infects a young Belarusian man/boy and the viewer watches it takes it's course; eventually turning him into a haggard old man. But Come And See also presents all of the German invaders as phantasmagoric monsters - which, no doubt many were. But, as history has shown, some of them were actually decent people swept up in the historical moment - Carl Ludwig "Luz" Long is one example. War "makes the good better and the bad worse."
Where have either said they support the russian invasion?
Your comments are insightful. It seems we, those at home, spared from the ravages of war, lack the imagination to understand the horror of war. As often as we’re told, we still fail to comprehend. Too many are eager to wave the flag and many, too young, to truly understand are ready to sign away their souls to “defend freedom” and other lies perpetrated by a government corrupted by the economics of war and the greed of arms dealers.
Not being one who prays, I yet pray for the day there are no war movies, as there are no more wars!
Horrors of war are known. Real situation with people cultures, desires of Eastern citizens, their history, etc are not known, despite public media accessible. The public (US citizens do not want to know, because they are afraid of being accused of being an enemy or traitor to the NATO machine that is behind the horrors of war. Investigations of the "atrocities" and who has committed them have not happened. History of that area and why the millions have chosen another path from Zelensky is still heavily censored.
Thanks, Chris. I know how hard it was for you to revisit your war correspondent memories.