Casualties of Peace

Yesterday, Brian De Palma's "Redacted" screened at the Venice Film Festival.

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..............Where are the Hollywood conservatives at a time when no less than 8 anti-war movies are coming out at this critical juncture?

David Gritten writes,

there's no doubt Redacted packs an extraordinary emotional punch. It ends with shocking still photos of Iraqis, dead, disfigured or in extreme distress because of the war. This montage left the audience at a Venice press screening stunned, silent and in a few cases tearful. The combination of De Palma's visceral style and the horrifying subject matter left me reeling.

What about cutting off faces with piano wire? Blowtorching, eye-removal, drilling holes? Baking children and serving them up to the parents? What about the atrocity of insurgents strapping a suicide vest onto a child with Down's Syndrome, and then sending him off to explode? Using children as decoys to drive a car bomb through a checkpoint? Or perhaps using children as human shields? Just plain using children. What does Brian De Palma's film have to say about these atrocities? That we're responsible for these as well, because we're "over there"? That al-Qaeda and insurgent atrocities are "isolated" cases, whereas the story about the rape of a 14 year old Iraqi girl by U.S. soldiers in his fictionalized account of it, is typical and representative of our military?

As one commenter, Zhangliqun, on Dennis Prager's blog points out,

If this is an indictment of American involvement in Iraq, what does it say about the UN, who sent rapist "peace keepers" into Africa?

Or about Socialism, whose soldiers were actually ORDERED by Stalin to rape German women when they invaded Germany?

[redacted] Or what about all the rapists in jail, the overwhelming majority of which vote Democrat if they vote at all? [/redacted]

Oh, by the way, there were incidents of American soldiers raping German women in WW2 also. I suppose the fear of such a possibility should have left Hitler in power. And Tojo.

Should we hold our soldiers to a higher standard? Of course! We don't need Brian De Palma's film to achieve that. All that De Palma's film does, is it serves al-Qaeda and all the anti-American forces that are working against America and her self-interests; and America's self-interest just so happens to coincide with what is in the best interest of Iraq. Arrogance? You tell me.

America has done more good for the world than evil. What is evil, is magnifying an evil act and distorting the perception that this is the normal behavior of what is the best military in the world; a military that has gone above and beyond what any military in the history of conflict has ever done to avoid civilian casualties.

De Palma, 66, whose "Casualties of War" in 1989 told a similar tale of abuse by American soldiers in Vietnam, makes no secret of the goal he is hoping to achieve with the film's images, all based on real material he found on the Internet.

"The movie is an attempt to bring the reality of what is happening in Iraq to the American people," he told reporters after a press screening.

"The pictures are what will stop the war. One only hopes that these images will get the public incensed enough to motivate their Congressmen to vote against this war," he said.

F**k you, De Palma!

Just which reality is he referring to? Showing the horrible images of war and violent death is not an indictment on the necessity to fight this war; it's an indictment to stick your head in the sand and avoid all wars. The absence of war does not equate with bringing about peace.

"Peace is not merely the absence of war, but the presence of justice, of law, of order- in short, of government."-Albert Einstein

"They have not wanted peace at all; they have wanted to be spared war- as though the absence of war was the same as peace."- Dorothy Thompson

For those with the stomach for it, (especially for those Venice Film Festival attendees who had their emotion-strings tugged by Brian De Palma's film, lapping up the propaganda) I recommend you click here for some mild but effective counter images.

It boggles my mind that the peace fascists who hold up signs and photos of dead Iraqi babies is somehow supposed to convince me that ending the war on their terms will somehow cause such images as dead Iraqi babies to go away.

Which side has slaughtered more Muslims? Al-Qaeda, or the U.S.? Which side makes every effort- to minimize collateral damage (and consequently putting our soldiers' lives at greater risk) and which side deliberately targets civilian casualties to splash across headline news?

Which side builds hospitals, mosques, schools, and infrastructure? Which side shows greater kindness and compassion toward the Iraqi children?

Which side is attempting to bring peace and security to the Iraqi people, and which side wishes to sabotage efforts for peace, subjugate a populace, and create a caliphate as a launching pad for more conflicts and greater wars with the world at large?

A host of anti-war Hollywood movies are on the horizon, and they are rooting for defeat and retreat. The "compassion" of the anti-war left ignores reality and consequence. They crave for peace without consideration that peace is not achieved by "bring the troops home"/"peace is patriotic"/"books not bombs"/ mantras. Removing us from the field of battle does not achieve peace at all. Fighting and defeating our enemies, does.

The casualties of peace- the kind of peace that the anti-war left advocates for- will bring more suffering; not less.

Previous Flopping Aces posts, related:
Sean Penn visit to Chavez
More Leftist Propaganda from Hollywood
Hollywood Set to Launch Anti-War Movies In Time For The Election


Hat tip for this post:
Confederate Yankee
Dennis Prager
Rantings of a Sandmonkey

Also blogging:
Bloviating Zeppelin
Now for Something Different
The Oxford Medievalist