Children of Men

Children of Men, currently in theaters, uses many cliches of the action/adventure drama about the reluctant hero and his eventual passionate engagement in the mission forced upon him, but the social commentary and powerful imagery will leave you pondering scenes in this film long after you leave the theater.

The film is set in Britain in 2027. Heavily armed Homeland Security forces are perpetually rounding up illegal immigrants and putting them in camps. Their processing is portrayed as cross between post 9/11 airport security and entry into a Nazi concentration camp. A large chunk of the film takes place in lawless urban wasteland that has a number of parallels to present-day Iraqi cities outside the Green Zone, and harkens back to British occupation of Northern Ireland. The British forces try to keep order amongst an intimidated non-British population living in squalor, whilst also battling terrorists and heavily-armed sectarian groups. I worry that the portrayal of security forces here is much like the vision present day Iraqis have of occupying coalition armies. One U.S government poll found that 90 percent of young Iraqis view the U.S. "as an occupying force." If so, our enterprise there is doomed.

U.S. to Iraq: "You just can't change your evil ways..."

As I said in my previous post, the Saddam execution is serving as a focal point for the Bush Administration's efforts to distance itself from the new regime it created in Iraq, so as to smooth the way for an inevitable abandonment. According to a new New York Times article, U.S. officials are saying:

• The hanging reveals "how the 'new Iraq' is starting to resemble, the repressive, vengeful place it was under Mr. Hussein, albeit in a paler shade."
• "The way it has come out with the hanging, we’ve substituted one dictatorship for another.”

My previous post also scoffed at U.S. claims that it was compelled to bow to Iraqi sovereignty on the timing and manner of Saddam's execution, and the New York Times article contains more U.S. spin on this. However, the article also notes that the American military fort ironically named "Camp Justice" completely encloses the Istikhbarat prison in which Saddam was executed, and where thousands of hangings occurred under Saddam's regime.
(A Carlos Santana song inspired the post title)