Getting an audience to listen to a message that is critical of the Iraq War is not hard. Political venues, water coolers, and street corners are full of disgust for the Bush Administration and countless citizens worldwide have Inauguration Day 2009 circled on their calendars. The difficult task is presenting a balanced and informed yet still passionate cross-examination of this red-hot topic. In a volatile, confusing time, Charles Ferguson’s new documentary No End In Sight is well aware of this challenge and ambitiously attacks this decade’s defining dividing point with the necessary goods.
In order to present the argument at hand, one must go back to the beginning to see where things went awry. Ferguson hinges his argument on four major points: the decision not to instill Martial Law after the fall of Baghdad; Paul Bremer’s subsequent decision to disassemble the Iraqi military; the poor planning of the amount of American troops needed to contain possible insurgencies; and the general lack of planning leading up to the invasion of Iraq. By comparison, Ferguson notes that President Eisenhower and his administration planned the occupation of Germany for two years. In the time the writer/director takes to reveal this factoid, past hasty decisions come to mind and it becomes clear why the U.S. has not been on the winning side of a war since 1945.
No End In Sight wisely shifts the blame away from Bush alone to his entire administration. The immediate finger-pointees are the Three Amigos and architects of the invasion: Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz. Ferguson isolates this trio as a group that acted without military advising or assistance from anyone with extensive relevant experience. From there, the only task was getting cabinet members such as Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell to buy into their ill-informed plan, which soon resulted in a snowball effect of head-nodding (the majority of U.S. citizens included). For Powell and others who later resigned their posts, playing along meant helping the U.S. government appear unified and sturdy. When they could no longer cope with being a part of such a corrupt machine, they bailed and their actions echo in the midst of subsequent and recent resignations.
The parties chosen to present the facts include authors of many recent books exploring the “why”s and “how”s of the Iraq War, a handful of respected journalists who were in Baghdad in early-mid 2003, and numerous government employees who were instrumental in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Baghdad yet abandoned soon after. In gathering this group, Ferguson has assembled an essential nexus of interviewees to help tell the story.
For their abandonment, the aforementioned former officials grant Ferguson full access to their frustrations and as the truth is exposed by the people who were converted to puppets in roles for which they did not audition, the audience is granted a rare insider treat. When a key player whose insight would have been additionally beneficial yet self-incriminating to the story is not included, their refusal to be interviewed is duly noted at the chronological point where their contributions would have been both most vital and personally damaging. The one exception to a “guilty” party agreeing to be interviewed is Walter Slocombe, a senior adviser of Bremer’s Coalition Provisional Authority. Despite his noble willingness to participate, the questions quickly become too big for Slocombe to handle alone. He does his best to tell what he can and escape unscathed, but at the same time exhibits the false innocence filibustering that likely would have been seen from his absent colleagues.
The result of these efforts is the mainstream film about the Iraq war for which truth seekers bewildered in the face of constant ill-informed patriotism have been waiting. Michael Moore stirred up welcome attention with his sloppy, rushed Fahrenheit 9/11, but Ferguson’s message is leagues more balanced and, in turn, more informative.
No End In Sight is all of these things...and it is redundant. Likely conscious of his repetition, Ferguson includes a clip, albeit a short one, from the PBS series Frontline, the Mt. Olympus of contemporary documentary programs. The clip’s episode, titled “Truth, War, & Consequences,” features interviews with many of the same players of No End In Sight and in multiple ways beat Ferguson’s film to the proverbial punch. With most of the story already told elsewhere, No End In Sight nevertheless exists as essential viewing based on its release date. While Frontline’s message was just as educational and true when the episode in question first aired in October 2003, more people are now willing to listen to the story after taking more lumps from the Bush administration. Ferguson is also likely aware of that story’s absence on the big screen and intelligently fills that void.
Whereas Spike Lee’s When The Levees Broke used similar interviewee choices and stock footage to help successfully expose the government injustice of Hurricane Katrina and the New Orleans aftermath, Ferguson’s film also stands as an important cinematic chronicle of modern U.S. history. And like the rebuilding of and aid toward the affected Gulf Coast communities is far from over, the Iraq war, true to Ferguson’s film’s title, has no end in sight.