War Made Easy's Nopartisan Iraq-War Skewering

Just in case you needed to hear how bad it is again

Comments (0) By Aaron Hillis Tuesday, Mar 11 2008

Details

War Made Easy
Directed by Loretta Alper and Jeremy Earp
Opens March 14, Quad Cinema

More About

With so many overlapping agendas between political critiques like Why We Fight, Outfoxed, No End in Sight, and this—Loretta Alper and Jeremy Earp's adaptation of media critic Norman Solomon's 2005 book by the same name—it's surprising that nobody has yet made an epically depressing mash-up entitled Why We're Fucked With No End in Sight. As a stand-alone thesis, War Made Easy may seem the least revelatory of the lot to any progressive-minded, mildly informed adult, though it should be mandatory viewing for students: In the last half-century, our "democratic" government has sold war to the American people as if it were a shiny new iPhone, only the ad campaigns have been filled with misinformation—an ongoing deception that the so-called liberal media has left unchallenged. Solomon draws sharp parallels between the lead-up to the Vietnam War and the invasion of Iraq; he also pokes holes in the fallacies of "smart bombs" and other sophisticated war toys (civilians made up 10 percent of the casualties in World War I; in Iraq, they make up 90 percent) and illustrates the cowardly complicity of the press. The doc is sobering, straightforward, and a bit drab, but to the participants' credit, it's also an entirely nonpartisan endeavor. Good luck telling that to the right once they hear the film is narrated by Sean Penn.