THIS WAR DOESN'T FIT INTO A SCREENPLAY

Typical Hollywooder/entertainer foolishness I view as being defined by when Hollywooder/entertainer knows just enough to think that he/she is actually making stirring and profound comments, but when upon reasonable, closer inspection the points he/she offers are ultimately hollow and underinformed.

Case in point. Thumbing through the print edition of Entertainment Weekly for September 10, 2004 while looking to be "entertained" for a moment, I found myself treated to a discourse on international law and Wilsonianism from "American Dreams" producer-creator Jonathan Prince. Let's look closely at each point in turn, in this "awesome" single, paragraph:

[He is] psyched about how timely his time-capsule show has become: "Let me lay out the parallels, says the effusive exec. "There's a Texan president in the White House.

Lyndon Johnson was from Texas, as is George W. Bush. Now that's powerful stuff he's shared with us. But in both cases, I thought we had elected not a Texan, but a U.S. president. And in any event, the comparison thuds to the ground, as soon as one realizes that Johnson was a Democrat.

Maybe, if Gore were in the White House now, and the situation were the same, Prince would be telling us all about a Texan and a Tennessean -- they are both from the south, and both states' first letter is "T".

It is all so obvious!

He's promised to get our boys home soon,

I'm not sure what the issue is here. No president wants to commit American soldiers to a hopeless fight anywhere. They aren't dictators. Geezh.

that we've just gotta get those bad guys,

Yes, yes, we know -- according to leftist Hollywood, the War on Islamist Terror as another "Vietnam". . .

. . . although I, for one, don't recall Vietnamese blowing up the Empire State Building, or (as in Russia) invading a school and blowing up -- deliberately, with extreme prejudice -- schoolchildren. The enemy of then, and the enemy of today are different. After all, the wars are DIFFERENT.

that we're gonna make the world safe for democracy.

Is Prince actually sneering at Woodrow Wilson? Does Prince even know from where the "make the world safe for democracy" line comes? Again -- another example of his knowing a little, but what he does know he misrepresents, misunderstands, and so, in the end, just sounds ignorant.

The expression was a commonplace during World War I, mostly owing to Wilson's having used it in his April 2, 1917 request for a declaration of war against Imperial Germany and the other Central Powers. Presumably, Prince has heard of that war and its aftermath? If he hasn't, he might take some time to look into how it was Wilson's "idealism", so derided by so many then and also still (such as by people like Prince, who apparently have no clue they are doing so because they haven't got the foggiest notions of what they are actually yammering about), that drove that president to champion the creation of what became the League of Nations. True, that League failed to prevent World War II of course. But its existence served as an example, which led directly to F.D.R's push for what was hoped would be a post-World War II improvement: the United Nations. And that is that same U.N. that today is the shining repository of the "internationalism" that Hollywood types like Prince claim to so admire.

How about this one? There is a Catholic man from New England running for office -- Bobby Kennedy, John Kerry.

Yep, how about it. I don't know what Prince might be, but I am a Roman Catholic. And I do not care what religion either Kennedy or Kerry happen to have been or to be. Or that they were and are from New England.

But remember, Prince is from "Hollywood". Life is a story . . .

And in '66 and '67 it even began to emerge that we were violating the Geneva Convention -- look at the My Lai massacre and Abu Ghraib.

Okay, we got there at last. Excellent how he has at least heard of the Geneva Conventions (not "Convention"), but obviously he has never read them in any depth.

If he had, he would have known that they, for example, explicitly require both sides to adhere to them, and cutting off the heads of civilian captives (and military ones, for that matter) is strictly forbidden. And, surprise, surprise -- on barbaric decapitation as a gross violation of international law, Prince has nothing to say.

About "the My Lai massacre" and "Abu Ghraib". Nice try, but comparing apples and oranges is just that. For after both My Lai, when U.S. troops did kill prisoners, and more recently Abu Ghraib, where U.S. troops have been accused mostly of beating and kicking prisoners around, scaring them badly, sexually abusing them, and making them wear women's underwear, etc., those soldiers involved have faced courts martial and prison time. Handing out such is called observing "international law" -- you misbehave in violation of treaty, you face punishment. And as I understand it now, "Abu Ghraib" may have led to one death, but that is precisely the "apple and oranges" point: there is no serious claim of an "Abu Ghraib massacre", even from ill-informed TV producers.

On the other hand, it would seem unlikely that those enemy responsible for decapitations of civilian captives will ever face a court martial in anyone's court. In fact, if their side wins, they'll be heroes. Just worth bearing that in mind, even if certain Hollywood producers deliberately edit such out -- because it doesn't fit into what they wish to be "the story".

The country is brutally divided."

It could also be called having a difference of opinion, which is the essence of democracy. And, funnily enough, I had thought the administration had banned differences of opinion? After all, left wing Hollywood never stops telling us how oppressed we all are. Look how oppressed Prince is, in producing a television show about the 1960s, and trying above to compare it to the early 2000s.

Which is about to be expected. As so many of us have said, over and over, this ain't "Vietnam", although the "Vietnam generation" just can't see that because to them EVERYTHING is "Vietnam". (I see that Prince was apparently born in 1958. That is a little young, for what I term the "Vietnam generation" -- but not that far off. His mentality is spot on part of it. And when I wrote the above, I didn't know his date of birth, but his comments were exactly of the sort that such people generally offer.)

And it's an uncomfortable truth but, in this war, the enemy just doesn't want to act to the script. Defeating them requires slightly more effort than "cancelling" them after, say, year three.   ¶ by Robert, Saturday, September 04, 2004