12 Strong a.k.a. Horse Soldiers is based on a book about a US Army Special Forces group sent to Afghanistan during the early days of the post-9/11 War on Terror. Recently released emails from the Army show that they made changes to the script in exchange for their support, including trying to rewrite one of […](Read more...)
Hollywood doesn’t make war films any more. This isn’t entirely true, but compared to the post-WW2 period there are a lot less war films being made today. In this in-depth episode I offer a brief history of war movies and anti-war movies, and how the Pentagon’s policy on supporting films depicting war seems to have changed over time. I highlight some of my favourite anti-war movies, along with the most anti-war films the DOD has supported.
In the second of my subscriber-only reviews of The Wire I look at season 2. Focusing on smuggling through the port of Baltimore this season explores how capitalism has evolved to a post-industrial phase dominated by service industries like sex and drugs, how investigating sex slavery is relegated behind lesser crimes, and the parallels between […](Read more...)
It’s a documented fact that nearly all of the highest-profile ‘domestic terror’ plots in the United States after 9/11 featured the “direct involvement” of undercover government agents and paid federal informants, and regularly featured the underhanded technique of entrapment in order conjure convictions. Most “sting” operations were either proposed or led by paid informants.
On May 1, 2003, President George W. Bush delivered his infamous “Mission Accomplished” speech on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (pictured below). The US Army’s official report detailing ‘lessons learned’ could end up in the dustbin of history.
Just as politicians start to believe their own speeches, intelligence agencies start to believe their own propaganda. Nowhere is this clearer than in the CIA's black stite torture program initiated in the wake of 9/11. Recently declassified documents detailing current CIA director Gina Haspel's role in the torture program show that the Agency adopted the '24 mentality' whereby they excused their crimes via claiming to stop imminent terrorist plots.
12 Strong, based on the book Horse Soldiers by Doug Stanton, is set in the early days of the US war in Afghanistan. Emails released by the US Army detail the support they and the Air Force provided to the production as well as their communications with the producers. During shooting, one of the producers wrote to the Army to thank them for helping to make the movie 'badass'.
Joanne invited me on the Around the Empire podcast to do a ‘high level compare and contrast’ of two war comedy films set in different wars in Afghanistan: Charlie Wilson’s War and War Machine. The films are similar in many respects – both comedies, both have A-list lead actors, both set in wars in Afghanistan, both based on books – but politically they are diametric opposites.
The new Amazon series Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan is the first TV show to film at CIA headquarters for several years, in keeping with the Agency’s long-time support for adaptations of Clancy’s work. In this episode I review and analyse the series, including the inevitable references to 9/11, the hallmarks of CIA input on the script and the question of whether the series acts as revenge fantasy for Islamist terrorists.(Read more...)
