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Iraq is like [fill in the blank]

9 comments on Iraq is like [fill in the blank]

Iraq is like [fill in the blank]

: Yesterday, I took you to a site that said Iraq is not like the U.S. in Vietnam is instead like the French in Algeria.

Today’s silly war comparison:

The world premiere of the Hollywood big-budget epit “Troy” in Berlin Sunday saw German-born director Wolfgang Petersen draw parallels between the Trojan war and the US-led war in Iraq….

Petersen, director of the World War II German submarine classic “Das Boot” (The Boot) and the action-thriller “Air Force One”, said he has been taken aback by the way the conservative rightwing has taken over the White House with a militaristic agenda.

The invasion of Iraq occurred just as shooting for the film got underway in Malta.

“I couldn’t believe it,” 60-year-old Petersen told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. “I thought, it’s as if nothing has changed in 3,000 years. People are still using deceit to engage in wars of vengeance.”

While stressing that he “did not make this film with the intention of making an anti-American statement”, Petersen said the parallels between the Trojan war and the Iraq war became more apparent daily during the filming.

“Just as King Agamemnon waged what was essentially a war of conquest on the ruse of trying to rescue the beautiful Helen from the hands of the Trojans, President George W. Bush concealed his true motives for the invasion of Iraq.”

Jeesh. Anything for a plug.

9 responses to “Iraq is like [fill in the blank]”

  1. KMK Avatar
    KMK

    This was a good article too. Along the “media comparison frenzy” line.
    Forgive me, but the head reels. A prison scandal in Iraq — already investigated, already in repair, but only recently and sensationally publicized — is now our nation’s destiny, not to mention our national character. City on the Hill? Abu Ghraib. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Abu Ghraib. Yorktown, Gettysburg, San Juan Hill, Verdun, Midway, Hamburger Hill, Baghdad? Abu Ghraib. Mark Twain, Mickey Mouse, the Salk vaccine and bubble gum? Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib.
    http://www.townhall.com/columnists/dianawest/dw20040510.shtml
    “Abu Ghraib is, more than anything else, the fulfillment of the media dream, the Vietnam they think they never had”

  2. TC-LeatherPenguin Avatar
    TC-LeatherPenguin

    Just as King Agamemnon waged what was essentially a war of conquest …
    Okay, I’m guessing this clown and Mikey McMoore are living together on some Fantasy Island, where any kind of flights of PR fancy are right…right?

  3. wellbasically Avatar
    wellbasically

    Here are two more stupid comparisons to add to your list:
    Iraq is like Japan
    Iraq is like Germany

  4. werner Avatar
    werner

    Here is Petersen in a recent interview with a German newspaper (excerpt, my translation):
    Q: Your attitude towards the USA did not change?
    “It did, I am pretty disenchanted. When I went to America in 1987 I was impressed by the unbashed, somewhat naive patriotism of many Americans. In the nineties, when we did Air Force One, national pride was rather innocent compared to today. Clinton was still president. Pride in your own country is after all not categorically bad.”
    Q: When did the disillusionment start?
    “With the new government and what happened after September 11. Especially with the Iraq war, which was completely senseless. He plunged Iraq into chaos and more or less increased the danger from terrorism.”
    […]
    Q: They say the mood was downright McCarthyite in Hollywood?.
    “That is exaggerated. I don

  5. werner Avatar
    werner

    Petersen is restrained compared to the other German in Hollywood, Roland Emmerich, maker of intellectual feasts “Independence Day” and “Godzilla”. His newest is the environmental disaster movie “The Day after Tomorrow”.
    In a recent interview with the German Spiegel newsmagazine, Emmerich goes on endlessly about his big message. Then he said a few things he will probably not repeat on Jay Leno:
    “We must not destroy our planet. The United States are the most powerful country, and there sits George W. Bush, a president who cares about nothing but oil. How different would the world be if the Democratic environmentalist politician Al Gore would have come to power? All this is hard to bear for me as a German. I never want to be an American.”
    Emmerich also takes that Pentagon “study” about climate change utterly serious as science (it was merely a worst-case scenario). Then he claims his next car could be a hybrid fuel/electric one, but the sacrifice may be too great: “Why does the industry build the ugliest designs for hybrid cars? There is method behind it. They want to keep selling their expensive fuel models…” He is not joking. A real thinker, that guy.
    I also came across a TV interview in which he said he didn

  6. Patricia Avatar
    Patricia

    What do you expect from a guy who made a sympathetic movie about a bunch of plucky Aryan supremacist Nazis?
    There’s another movie I won’t see.

  7. Giles Avatar
    Giles

    yep….
    I think only a Mel Brooks movie could give us more insight into Iraq.

  8. Rus Steel Avatar
    Rus Steel

    Hmm. Are we talking about the *same* Air Force One where President Harrison Ford makes the following speech:

    The dead remember our indifference. The dead remember our silence.

    I came here tonight to be congratulated. But today when I visited the Red Cross camps overwhelmed by the flood of refugees fleeing from the horror of kazakhstan, I realized I don’t deserve to be congratulated. None of us do. Let’s be clear. The truth is, we acted too late. Only when our own national security was threatened did we act. Radek’s regime murdered over 200,000 men, women, and children. And we watched it on TV. We let it happen. People were being slaughtered for over a year, and we issued economic sanctions and hid behind the rhetoric of diplomacy.

    How dare we?

    The dead remember. Real peace is not just the absence of conflict; it’s the presence of justice.

    Tonight I come to you with a pledge to change America’s policy. Never again will I allow our political self-interest to deter us from doing what we know to be morally right. Atrocity and terror are not political weapons. And to those who would use them, your day is over. We will never negotiate. We will no longer tolerate, and we will no longer be afraid. It’s your turn to be afraid.

    Via The Spoons Experience
    I wonder if Mr. Peterson might find any parallels here?

  9. The Proprietor Avatar
    The Proprietor

    um… Das Boot = The Boat, not The Boot. As in U-Boat. And I don’t recall any “plucky Aryan supremicist Nazis” in it. Just a bunch of extremely scared guys doing a frightening job. In fact, the movie made much of the fact that the Nazis brought about the war that put them there in the first place.