Price

Conditions: Cold, Worn


Defeat.

Because that really is what it is. After about 9 years of chaos, the American military has handed over it's last base to the Iraqi forces ahead of the final stages of it's withdrawal before the end of the year. It leaves behind a country that is still shattered, still rocked by attacks, still in mourning. President Obama has gallantly tried to talk of how the troops were brave and true, serving and sacrificing for their country with honour, and that's fine. But the elephant in the room remains ignored. America invaded Iraq in 2003 based on lies, greed and arrogance. A different America leaves Iraq, chastened, bitter and perhaps a little stunned. And of course the Iraq left behind is much changed as well. Released from under a dictator, it is nonetheless a broken country that requires help and a lot of time to possibly rebuild.

The cost of war is more than numbers, of course. Losing a family member or a lifetime of disability are incalculable.

“The end of former Iraq President Saddam Hussein’s brutal regime represents a considerable global good, and a nascent democratic Iraqi republic partnered with the United States could potentially yield benefits in the future,” Duss and Juul of the Center for American Progress write. “But when weighing those possible benefits against the costs of the Iraq intervention, there is simply no conceivable calculus by which Operation Iraqi Freedom can be judged to have been a successful or worthwhile policy.”

That’s a political and historical judgment that no doubt will be debated for years.

- www.csmonitor.com/

And so what happens now? With Iraq in such a state, hardly any military and no air force, it is vulnerable to it's neighbours. America may be less likely to jump headfirst into another middle eastern conflict in the near future. The balance of power around the world has been rocked. The instigators made their money and got their medals, there will be no real comeuppance for them. The only real hope we have is that it is a lesson learned, and learned hard.



Film Review: The Debt.

The Debt is one of those two-stories-in-one kind of movies, telling the tale of three mossad agents on a mission in East Germany in 1966 in order to capture and escort back to Israel a Nazi doctor, while in present day the same three agents try to deal with each other and the lingering aftermath of how that mission turned out. While unable to bring the criminal back home to justice, they do apparently kill him, so are lauded as heroes. But they're not heroes, in actual fact the doctor got away and they just made up a story about killing him to save face. Now all these years later a journalist has apparently found the same old Nazi in a hospital somewhere, and in order to keep the secret they've got to finish him off.

The film is ultimately about truth, and how lies make us prisoners. It's also a bit of a commentary on the Mossad's practice of abducting people after World War 2 that they believed were war criminals, although there's not much to be said on the subject. Switching back and forth between the two stories is a bit of a juggling act, but since both stories are interesting ones it works quite well. The casting is excellent, too, with the highlight being Helen Mirren as the older version of the female Mossad agent. Essentially caught between her two partners, she has to live with the choices they have made, and ultimately is the only one who can try to make it right. She's really good at conveying a strength and a regret at the same time.

The film is well made and quite authentic. It's a tribute to them all how well it comes across. I guess the main problem is somehow a lack of overall dramatic tension to the film. Everyone does or is doing what they need to do, in both time lines, and there isn't a separate element trying to stop them or catch them (other than the faceless police/security forces). As good as it is, I think it needed an extra element of opposition somehow to really sharpen the point. The ending is a bit abrupt as well, with lingering questions. So overall a pretty interesting film, but perhaps not the full knockout punch it could have been. Three and a half drips out of five.


- Peace out