I don't buy that this movie was made without bias. I mean cetain clips had to be selected, and they were almost all pro-Bush. I still thought it was very well done, but I wouldv'e liked to hear a little more people being critical of America; thats probaly closer to reality. Although, maybe the Iraqis like America and the "liberal media" is distorting the truth. What do you guys think?
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"but I wouldv'e liked to hear a little more people being critical of America;"
good gawd!!!
havent u hippies had enough of bush bashing?
everywhere i go its non-iraqi's telling me an iraqi that my point of view is wrong because it isnt following the popular "anti-bush trend"
how sad!
i dont love bush, but that does not mean im not grateful to the coalition, and u silly "awlad el 7asheesh" suddenly know more than us dont u !
maybe you would just like a movie where everyone just says
"we love saddam, we hate america..allahu akbar, CHOPPING HEADS HOOPLA!!"
oh wait dont u hippies already have that? from FARENHEI 9/11?!?@$?#@!?$
i mean if ALLL iraqi's hated america, then no place is safe in iraq for americans, but that's bloody wrong, what about basra, irbil, many parts of iraq!
i know this may sound SHOCKING to a few narrowminded few but iraq does not only consist of "FALLUJAH" or the now-pacified "NAJAF"....yes i know SHOCKING!!!
that being said, not all iraqi's love america,because there is no strong trust between iraqi's and american's , but we dont hate them!? grateful to an extent
out of all the different iraqi views, never has one said that the war was illegal , wether they like america or not...remeber that..
this is a movie made by iraqi's not liberal blabla americans
But as the credits say
PEOPLE OF IRAQ : AS THEMSELVES
the website of the movie, pre-production , consisted of on application , where they asked different people from iraq if they would like to take part and use one of their camera, and how best to position it....hmm, maybe u shud revise ure opinion before u blurt out random propaganda that is all typical of current political debates
I am an american conservative who was apposed to our military action in Iraq. When it comes to war I think every family should ask themselves, am I willing to give the life of my son or daughter for this cause?
Having seen this movie however makes me feel better about our involvement. I see that there are Iraqis who do not want us just to leave now. I had thought at the outset that there should be an immediate popular vote asking - do you want american troops to stay or go, and when? and then we would know exactly if we are welcome or not.
I had also been exasperated by the fact that, although we get lots of news out of Iraq - we are never shown a simple tour of Baghdad or a thoughful and calm conversation with the people of Iraq. This movie gives us this and it is a great communicator. The only film of driving down Baghdad streets I had seen previously was one of a gun battle between insurgents and american security.
Any one know of a good message board where I can hear more from Iraq's people?
Greetings to all
Terence.
I just watched this movie and figured I'd look it up on imdb to see what other people thought about it. I read some pretty backwards stuff, but none as backwards as the comment "am I willing to give the life of my son or daughter for this cause?"
Terrence, parents don't give the lives of their children. If they join the military, they give their own. When I signed the paperwork that brought me into the military, neither of my parents were present. When I took the oath to protect and defend the united states against all foreign and domestic enemies, my parents were there to support a decision I made as an adult human being. This is something that both you and Michael Moore seem to miss. You don't "sign up your children" to be sent to Iraq. We choose to go of our own free will.
--tc
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haha. nice response. yeah just because it didnt feature pple saying *beep* Bush doesnt mean it was necessarily bias. Surely not everyone in Iraq was opposed to the American invasion and sure as hell they weren't unhappy when Saddam was captured. If anything I think it reflects the optimism they had initially, where after decades under a dicatator, finally he was toppled and a peaceful, open and democratic iraq seemed possible. It may not have turned out to be quite the case. Perhaps some of these people are now cursing America, wishing the invasion hadn't happened. but for the time it was filmed I think it was reasonable. In any case, they are Iraqis, it's their point of view, you simply cannot say it's not true.
First of all I gotta say I haven't seen this movie yet, but I've seen a little clip of it, and it felt strange, so I wanted to check out if it was pro-US propaganda. So far it seems like it is.
First of all, if you want a fairly unbiased view of things, you shouldn't read Thomas Friedman. This is the guy that wrote "The Lexus and the Olive Tree". I think it was Chomsky that said it was pretty much a wet kiss to globalisation. He is also a critic of social movements that challenge globalisation.
For an insightful view of the Iraq question, I strongly recommend Milan Rai's "War Plan Iraq". It was written before the 2nd Iraq war, and is right on the money on disturbingly much.
Greg Palast has also written some great, and disturbing, articles on Iraq. He's an investigative reporter.
It's hard to know where to start, cause there's so much that is wrong about the Iraq war, but I'll give it a go.
As we all know by now, there was no WMDs in Iraq, which was the US' official reason for invading the country. They even fabricated 'evidence' to try to back it up, but Blix and his team weren't fooled. This whole sharade was an attempt to get public support for the war at home, and it was successful. They somehow managed to hammer into the people that there was a link between Hussein and Al Qaida, a link not even the CIA managed to find.
What the US wants in Iraq is of course their massive oil reserves. Iraq has the 2nd biggest oil reserves in the world, according to the CIA World Factbook. Saudi Arabia is 1st, Kuwait 3rd and Iran 4th.
It's not just a matter of access to oil, they want to control the flow of oil.
The US is also in the process of bringing capitalism to Iraq, which is a dark chapter in itself, giving away Iraq's companies to US corporations.
I could go on and on about the US atrocities in Iraq, such as the bombing of hospitals, bridges and other infrastructure, in clear breach of the Geneva conventions.
If the US had allowed it back in 1991, Saddam would have been gone. The opposition had taken control of 14 out of Iraq's 18 provinces. The problem was the US didn't have a guy to put in his place. That would have meant a Muslim leader, and the country could pretty fast have turned into a new Iran.
Now the US has got their guy in Allawi. He is happy to follow US commands, and will surely win the upcoming 'election'.
To try and sum this up, the US and their coalition of war criminals have nothing to do in Iraq. The war and large parts of the subsequent occupation are huge war crimes. The war has created more terrorists than bin Laden could have dreamt about, and perhaps that's what Bush & Co wants. When they sooner or later attack US targets again, perhaps he can pin it on Iran...
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HOOOPLA!!!
finally someone who appreicates my work!
I have a fan!!
in ure face HIIPPPIES!!
now there's nothing new i can tell u about iraq and my point of view as an iraqi , coz u've read what i've said and u agree so hoora to that , so there's no need to convince you
Although i do warn you , people will attack you for not thinking like them, those people are what i call "hippies", yes i've said it loads of times over and over again. they may not be weed smoking hippies for real , but then again WHO CARES...i hate them and i will categorize them as sandal wearing backpackers.
I was always willing to reply to people in a manner of high inteligence but the replies i would receive were absolutely diguisting.....for example "YOU ARE NOT IRAQI .... YOU SPEAK ENGLISH" oh dear god did that piss me off
they call me a neo-conservative american or something , so i might as well call them hippies...i think its worked ,mind you, coz i have not heard of them in a while!
If u want my ..expert... point of view on iraq/islamic/arabic feel free to ask I am always open to a few moments with my fans after all, an autographed picture is always available as well..or maybe a mousepade with my face on it? or a pen? or an action figure that once presed initiates the scream
" HIPPIE'S GO HOME" or "You're alll nothing but weed smoking micheal moore wannabe's" its all adjustable (by the way i dont mind micheal moore , i liked BFC , but he did make iraq seem like a paradise , to further prove the point that bush sucks , i dont mind the hate that people have for bush , but i think both views are never taken in his documentaries)
anyhoo im off to find some more anti-war non-iraqi's to challenge them to a duel
I don't really have much time to answer, as I'm moving tomorrow, but here it goes...
Nobody can really be 'objective' about anything, and certainly not about something that stirrs up so many feelings as wars. Chomsky is an ideologue, think he calls himself a radical, or anarchist, or something like that. But he does know an awful lot of what goes on inside the White House. He's read an awful lot of declassified documents and so on, so I believe he knows very well what he's talking about, and I think he is pretty 'objective' about the US. There is every reason to critizie what the US is doing in a lot of countries, and perhaps especially in Iraq. Chomsky does just that, and everything he says is very well documented, as you know if you've read any of his books.
The big problem isn't really globalisation, but the way capitalism works. Capitalism and a sustainable society for all in the long run, is on a crashcourse of eachother. This is where the real problem lies I think.
I am critical of what the Bush administration does, and of many US corporations' activities across the globe, I'm not anti-US as many mislabel people with my kind of view of the world.
I don't really have time to go into the war question again, but it's been well documented from a well of sources that the US has nothing to do there. They are there for the oil, and for more control of oil flow, get control of Iraq's important assets, and turn the country capitalistic, American-style.
Just look at what is happening on the ground, and it's hard to disagree with the above.
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Thank you, Fudge. You've said all the things I wish I could say, but am too inarticulate to express. To your credit, Panagea(sp?), you've made this a much more exciting read. But you've got to get over this "blood for oil" thing. I doubt even the reasons behind WWII were that clear-cut.
By the way, I know Voices of Iraq producer Eric Manes and co-producer,/editor Martin Kunert personally and have no reason to believe that they are secretly tools of the Republican Party. As someone who has edited both legitimate documentaries and reality-based TV trash, I think it's safe to say that anyone who would spend the countless hours it takes to construct such a feature-length documentary for relatively little pay wants to convey the truth (as they see it) as clearly as possible. (This goes for Michael Moore, too. He believes what he's saying. He just mind using gross manipulations of the facts to back it up. His methods are closer to reality-TV than to documentary.) You cannot spend the time watching the 400 hours of footage (as the editors for this film probably did) or read the hundreds of pages of English transcripts and not develop a point of view on the material. I suspect that the reason this documentary is so heavily favors the pro-American, pro-Bush stance is because this is the most representative of the footage. If 97% of what the editor viewed took this position, then how responsible would it be for him or her to make the film 50% anti-American/anti-Bush. On the other hand, if an editor screened this footage and 97% of the subjects said that the U.S. war in Iraq was a horrible miscalculation, it would take a truly despicable person to present only the 3% that said otherwise.
People really said these things, (if their mouths are on camera as the speak and uninterrupted by b-roll, they really said it) just like the heartbroken mother in Fahrenheit 911. Whatever may not be included in Voices of Iraq, the pain and joys of the Iraqis in the film are genuine, and thus, valuable.
Love
Joel
[email protected]