Redact
O'Reilly
By Mary Shaw
20 November, 2007
Countercurrents.org
November
16 saw the limited release of Brian DePalma's new film, Redacted. Right-wing
gasbag Bill O'Reilly has been attacking this film, and calling for a
boycott, so I knew I had to see it. Fortunately it's showing in Philly,
so I planned my weekend around a matinee screening.
The film presents fictionalized
accounts of events leading up to the rape and murder of a 14-year-old
Iraqi girl by U.S. troops, and the killing of her family, and the aftermath
of that tragic night.
Of course, that girl and
her family were not the only victims of a war gone terribly awry. Earlier
in the film, we see a pregnant woman shot to death by U.S. troops as
her brother drove through a checkpoint while rushing his sister to the
hospital to give birth.
But the violence isn't one-sided.
We see a U.S. Army master sergeant blown to pieces by an IED in full
view of his men, who later went on to commit the rape and murder.
It's a study of the toll
that war can take on the minds of the soldiers. When you're not sure
who you can trust, you eventually decide that it's safest to trust nobody.
Not only do the lines get blurred between which Iraqis you can trust
or not, you also start to distrust your fellow soldiers. And it gets
worse when you start drinking.
It's also a study of how
the war gets filtered through the media, and how, as a result, our ideas
and beliefs are controlled as well. You and I cannot be in Iraq. So,
when it comes to war, the media tells us what we should know and what
we should think.
And therein lies the true
irony of O'Reilly's attacks on the film and its makers. Keep quiet about
the atrocities of war, and America will continue to go shopping. If
you recognize that war is hell, you are on the side of al-Qaeda. Go
figure.
Every American should see
this film, including every member of the Bush administration. Because
it's not so much about what American troops are doing to the Iraqis,
but rather what Bush's war is doing to our troops. Their actions are
just a consequence of that.
While the soldiers who committed
the rape and murder upon which that episode of the movie was based should,
and are, being punished, they're not just a few bad apples. They're
the fruit of a poisonous tree. And Bill O'Reilly is the snake dangling
from a low-hanging branch and tempting his followers with the poisonous
fruit of that tree.
Mary Shaw is a Philadelphia-based writer and activist.
She is a former Philadelphia Area Coordinator for the Nobel-Prize-winning
human rights group Amnesty International, and her views on politics,
human rights, and social justice issues have appeared in numerous online
forums and in newspapers and magazines worldwide. Note that the ideas
expressed here are the author's own, and do not necessarily reflect
the opinions of Amnesty International or any other organization with
which she may be associated. E-mail: [email protected]
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