Why Are We In Iraq? Please Remind Me.

I just read Tom Engelhardt’s typically eloquent and thought-provoking reflections on the U.S. project of “bringing democracy” to Iraq. Like Tom, I’ve never been to Iraq. In fact, the closest I’ve come was the other night when I watched the Academy-award winning film, The Hurt Locker. (Am I the last person in the U.S. to see it?)  I had to keep reminding myself that it didn’t take me to the real Iraq. It took me to someone’s imaginary Iraq (which was actually Jordan and Canada, it turns out).

But like Tom, I believe that those of us who remain at a distance can sometimes (often?) see what people on the spot are too close-up to see. So perhaps the makers of The Hurt Locker did us a favor by giving us a pseudo-insider’s view that actually kept us some distance from the real thing.  It gives us a space to reflect, a chance to think through some important issues that need distance, and time, to understand.

What struck me most about The Hurt Locker was the way the main characters pursued their clearly defined task (defusing those bombs before they do any harm) in a setting of totally undefined (indeed completely irrational, chaotic) purpose and meaning.  We could tell why that EOD team was sent out on each individual mission. But we had no idea why the U.S. military was in Iraq or what it was trying to accomplish at all. Apparently the EOD team didn’t either. Nor did they seem to care.

True, the film did make it clear why its hero was there: to get an endless round of adrenalin fixes. (In fact the film made it too clear, which is its fatal flaw as art.)  Or was he actually an anti-hero? And were his teammates anti-heroes too? Yet another ambiguity to pile on the many ambiguities of this inexplicable war.

I understand why many peace activists criticized the film for refusing to take a clear antiwar stand. That was my first reaction: Should we praise Leni Riefenstahl for her seemingly non-judgmental films about the Third Reich? But on further reflection, I’m tempted to give the filmmakers the benefit of the doubt and say that they did a fine job of making sure that, in their fictional Iraq, absolutely everything was ambiguous, uncertain, unclear.

That should be the main point of any discussion of Iraq. It is the first major war the U.S. has fought where no one can say whom we are fighting, much less why we are fighting. Engelhardt points out clearly that the stated goal — to “bring democracy” to Iraq — is as unbelievable and senseless as it is hypocritical and arrogant.  I’ve always been a great fan of the idea that every war is overdetermined. There are always numerous reasons for each war, no one of which is “the true” reason.

Even for those who think they know what this war is about, no one has ever know, or knows now, exactly who “the enemy” was/is. That’s the key point The Hurt Locker brings home most powerfully. And if you can’t say who the enemy is, how can you possibly define the goal or purpose of the war? That’s the crucial question, which neither the president who started the war nor his successor who is continuing it can answer. With that question unanswered, after watching The Hurt Locker and thinking back on everything else I’ve learned about this war, it’s hard to resist the conclusion that the main purpose of the war may be simply to fight the war.

Of course hardly anyone asks questions about Iraq any more. It’s all so George W. era.  As Engelhardt rightly says, Iraq is now largely the “forgotten” war.  Turning the war into the Best Picture of the Year — putting the focus on its entertaining form, not its disturbing content — is one more step in that process of forgetting. How ironic: A film that gives us the distance to see the truth clearly can end up helping to mask the truth.

I only hope that Kathryn Bigelow will follow up her triumph, some day, with a sequel about the last U.S. soldier to die in Iraq. I can even suggest a title:  “How Do You Ask A Woman to Be the Last Woman to Die for a Mistake?”