A Seemingly Infinite Mess

I have avoided this film for long enough!
by Charlie Leck

Okay! I confess forthwith! I swiped the title from Wesley Morris and the Boston Globe. I couldn't resist because it says it so perfectly. It being the incredible mess in which the United States of America is now involved in the nation of Iraq. Morris used the phrase in his review of the documentary film, No End in Sight.

My wife has been bugging me to see the film for over a month now. Here's the problem: she's always busy! Don't blame it on me. I don't have a host of horses comin' after me. Nor do I have all those sheep and little lambs begging to be fed and looked after 7 days each week. I don't have a boss who insists I work on a Sunday morning at 6 o'clock and keeps me impressed in servitude until the sun has gone down. Yet, I am bright enough to know that the romance of all her work is going to keep you, my faithful readers, much more sympathetic to the plight of my betrothed than to me, the starving writer.

So, I shall go see the film on my own, some afternoon during the coming week. After all, how long can one put off seeing a film that has an average rating of 4.9 stars out of a possible 5 stars on Google's movie web site [ http://www.google.com/movies ]. That's based on reviews in the Chicago Sun-Times (Roger Ebert), the Boston Globe, Entertainment Weekly, GuideLive, and the Chicago Tribune. Only GuideLive gave it less than the maximum 5 stars (4.6).

The NY Times said of it: "This essential, infuriating documentary calmly and thoroughly chronicles the incompetence and arrogance in the early days of the American occupation of Iraq, which set the stage for what was to follow." A.O. Scott, who reviewed the film for the NY Times, wrote: "It's a sober, revelatory and absolutely vital film."

The documentary is the brain-child of Charles Ferguson, a former Brookings Institution scholar. Ferguson has a doctorate in political science. The thesis of the film, which every review I've encountered says he proves, is that there are no correct choices left in shaking ourselves of the disaster we alone created in Iraq. Very poor planning led to very poor results. The invasion was superbly planned and run. Running the nation following the invasion was another question all together and there was no real plan. We made two essential and devastating mistakes that cost us the war. First, we dismantled the Iraqi military and that left, as Ferguson points out, "nearly a half million armed men with no one to serve." Then, Paul Bremer's de-Baathification program made the intelligentsia of Iraqi society – the teachers, librarians, curators and engineers – jobless.

No matter what the public relations program of George W. Bush says, the chaos of Iraq has not subsided. Now, we are in an absolute no-win situation – a situation with which no nation on the globe has any interested in assisting us.

All the reviews show, and all my friends who have seen the film agree, that the arrogance, incompetence and stupidity of George W. Bush and his team is remarkable. History will not forgive this administration. It is astonishing that such a large cadre of loyalists remains committed to him and his desperate hope for victory in an unwinnable situation.

The common theme in all the reviews of No End in Sight is that it is a depressing and devastating look at Iraq and the mistakes we made there; yet, it is a vitally important film for each of us to see. I have avoided it long enough.