What's Hollywood to Do?
Victor Davis Hanson
The Corner
Over the last eight years we saw Fahrenheit 911, Syriana, Redacted, Rendition, Stop Loss, Lions for Lambs, In the Valley of Elah, and a host of other movies released about the U.S. war on terror and the Iraqi conflict. The general theme was that George Bush lied and so destroyed the Constitution and put us into Iraq, where we are waging an amoral war, among other unmentionables.
Are there additional such movies in the pipeline?
After all, U.S. policy under President Obama has largely adhered to the Petraeus/Bush plan in Iraq; Obama actually accelerated operations in Afghanistan where losses are spiking. Renditions and tribunals continue. So do Predator strikes, as well as wiretaps and intercepts. Guantanamo, while not in the daily news as before, remains open. Have suddenly, say, between November 2008 and today, the above policies changed in any measurable manner, or, was the furor simply that the policies per se were never the problem, just the person who implemented and oversaw them? Take him away, and presto, the same policies become fine — and thus no longer warrant the best and brightest in Hollywood to offer much needed exposés?
All of which poses the question: What is Hollywood to do now? Do a hit piece on Panetta's CIA? Obama and the new opium war in Afghanistan? Robert Gates's unlawful Pentagon? The back-room deals of Hillary Clinton at State? In nine months, we went from lions to lambs?
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