>>David O. Russell, _Three Kings_ (with a bit of Ice Cube), 1999
>>
>>Yeah, the ultimate agitprop for human rights interventionism, going so far
>>as to legitimate it by acknowledging and apolgizing for the U.S.
carpet-bombing
>>of non-combatants. Basically an ad for how Clinton foreign policy mythically
>>presents itself, as opposed to the realities of Bush foreign policy.
>>
>>But also a visually interesting and complex ("ironic") flick as well ...
>>
>>John G.
DP said:
>You got that impression? I thought "Three Kings" beautifully exposed the
>real policy behind the Gulf War, especially its aftermath, when the US
>allied itself with Saddam in order to supress the Shia uprising in the south
>(the Kurdish uprising wasn't dramatized). The main plot ran along "Dirty
>Dozen" lines, but to dismiss this film as "agitprop" for the bombing of
>Serbia is rather farfetched, in my view.
I now say:
Well, my recollection is dim, and I take the 5th, but from what I recall the subtext of the film was that if the U.S. really cared about Wilsonian ethno-racial self-determination "we" should've stuck around and supported the mutineering officers and the Shia in Southern Iraq. Now don't get me wrong -- I'm not saying that if Clinton was commander-in-chief he would've done this, but he might have done something else (like not cease at the "Highway of Death") using the "plight" of the Shia and the Kurds as a pretext. So the film wasn't agitprop for what Clinton, Albright, Cohen etc. might have actually done, but for "human rights interventionism" which is their ideological alibi.
Nonetheless, you're right, the film did nicely expose the hypocrisy of the "liberate the Iraqis from their despotic dictator" line, and the footage of innocent civilians getting blown up in the middle of the night was moving and incisive, if you divorce it from the political subtext which I've outlined. Certainly I don't mean to render an analysis which suggests that a film such as this is univocal ...
And the depictions of how anti-Arab racism translates into racism within the grunts (Ice Cube objecting to "sand n-word") is quite good, too ...
John G.