Well.. that was coherant. ^.^
anyways, I dunno if I missed it on the way through, but no one seemed to point out to the original poster (who is most likely long gone by now :P) that this movie was made a year before 9/11 and the invasion of afghanistan, and about 2 years (I forget the exact timeframe involved :P) before the invasion of Iraq. This means that the story was written more with a post-mogadishu (Black Hawk Down, for those who aren't familiar with the story... I reccomend at least seeing the movie, it's quite good despite the "oh no, not the guy with the family back home!" aspect to it which is more of a narrative neccessity in turning a ****storm like the running battle in Mogadishu into a coherant story than it was pure propaganda) mindset than an Arabs-are-public-enemy-number-1 mindset more common post 9/11.
The movie was IIRC made AFTER there had been several major attacks on US Embassies (I can think of at least two, both of which were Al Queada, so having the people of Yemen as the agressors in this movie wasn't a huge leap away from reality) so the story of US civilians working on sovereign US soil (inside the embassies) being targeted was still at least somewhat fresh in the minds of the public. Also the attack on the USS Cole I believe was somewhere in the last few years of the 90's, so attacks on US troops who were serving a non-offensive purpose were fairly recent as well.
Strangely, I went into seeing this film under the impression it was based on a true story. I'm not sure where I picked up that notion, but I swear I remember some kind of documentary airing on SBS or the ABC (I'm australian, for those unfamiliar with those networks, they're two government funded networks, and thus tend to be the ones to get a lot of documentaries, although the SBS is usually somewhat more... provocative than the ABC since they seem to be under less restrictions) about a very similar sounding attack on an american embassy by an armed mob.
Meh, I'm sure eventually I'll figure out where that memory comes from.
Anyways, it's obvious to anyone who can read the year this movie was made that it can't possibly be pro-Iraq War propaganda because at the time this film was made there WAS no war in iraq (well, no invasion) and no war in Afghanistan (just a lot of human rights people complaining about the Taliban).
One little side note on the "it's all about oil" thing, btw... In a way, I believe it's KINDA correct in a roundabout way. The original Gulf War (Desert Storm) was caused by oil. Not by the americans neccessarily wanting Iraq's oil, but Iraq invading Kuwait due to Kuwait undercutting Iraq's price for oil, thus forcing Saddam to sell his reserves for far less than he would normally get, and thus putting a bit of a crimp in his economy. Saddam, of course, retaliated. Unfortunately he chose to do so in a way that brought down the wrath of the rest of the world. The biggest mistake in this entire deal was that the US shouldn't have waited 10-11 years before completing what had started in Desert Storm. It's a matter of all or nothing, quite simply.
George Bush (Sr) basically did the right thing going in to liberate Kuwait from Saddam's forces. However, it was quite obvious that Bush's ideal end result was taking out Saddam, who was basically a problem that previous US presidencies had created through trying to fix other problems they'd created through their own mistakes (Iran, specifically). Bush wanted to sweep their own mistake under the rug (Notice all the cold war mistakes coming out to bite people in the ass nowdays? Bin Laden was a result of US training in the fight against the soviets in Afghanistan, Saddam AND the currently hostile Iranian government are results of the CIA's influencing persian politics, and then trying to clean up afterward, etc... The only other example I can think of at 3am is the previously mentioned Pinochet in south america) but the problem was they pushed the Iraqis back into their own country, and got the Iraqi people all excited about the idea of freedom and convinced them to rise up and take on Saddam's government.... then stopped. They pulled out. If the war had continued to the extent of the 2002 war back then, not anywhere near as many people would have complained. Instead Bush relented and the US forces pulled out.
Flash forward about 10 years or so, Bush's son manages to get into power and after jerking around for a few months gets thrown neck-deep into the war on terrorism. This leads to Operation Enduring Freedom (gee I hope I'm getting these names right :P It's late dagnammit)where Bush sends troops into Afghanistan to go after the ringleader of the attack on the WTC and Pentagon. Suddenly Bush has a taste for blood, and has experience in deposing unfriendly governments, suddenly he gets an idea. Why not go in and finish what his dad started in '91? Sure, Saddam was a monstrous leader, but he'd been effectively cripped by Desert Storm and the following trade sanctions and later UN bombing campaign. He posed no threat whatsoever and the safest way to work things probably would have been to do what they basically did to North Korea and Cuba... just ignore the country while it's not a threat and hope the dictator dies of natural causes and gets replaced with someone less opposed to the US ideal. This means that in 2002 the war just wasn't easily justifiable. The fact that evidence had to be fabricated to justify the invasion is proof of this.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not exactly anti-war... however, I'm not pro-war either. The way I see it, getting rid of saddam was good, however the execution of the invasion itself was what was done poorly. Had US forces simply rolled over the border into Iraq BEFORE George Sr had destroyed the trust of the Iraqi people for the US, while the americans were still greeted as the saviors who were going to save the people from Saddam, and before Al Queada and other related groups had managed to get as strong a stranglehold in the region, then the occupation probably would have been somewhat shorter, it would have had more support since there wouldn't have been as many countries telling the US 'it's your mess, you deal with it'. Rebuilding would have been faster, and between faster rebuilding and lower levels of hatred toward the US, the troops would have been pulled out earlier to prevent the monumental loss of american lives in the war.
But hey, that's just a guess. It's possible it would have just peeved off the region earlier and brought on 9/11 style attacks sooner rather than later. I aint paid to know everything about foreign politics so all I know is what I read and hear about, so who am I to say what'd happen? All I can put forward is my opinion of how things would have gone (yes, that's a disclaimer to stop people from saying I was putting forward my own muddled memories as facts :P)
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