Left wing america hating Propaganda

I never bothered top waste money seeing this in the theaters but caught it on cable, this is a 'war' film allright...about the generational warfare between Baby Boomers who want to see everything in terms of Vietnam and young adults who are rightly cynical about the bill of goods they've been fed by society (a society run by the Baby Boomers who keep criticizing 'they' the whole film)

First you have 2 'conversations' that are, quite frankly, boring as tears...Meryl Streep is a leftie reporter trying to delude herself shes relevant in an era where a blogger will scoop her long before shes decyphered her shorthand...shes chatting with Tom cruise a Republican neo-con senator who's portrayed as a hawk with presidential ambitions, meanwhile Robert Redford is a college professor, veitnam vet and former protestor trying to convince a student he feels can 'make a difference' to do just that vs pursue materialism, finally we get 2 former students of Redfords in a mini 'black hawk down' in the mountains of afghanistan.

Cruise is the only person that comes across as a 'true believer' in fighting the war on terror, even tho its portrayed as a cynical ploy for his presidential campaign...mean while everyone else comes across believing Afghanistan is a 'mistake' 'the wrong strategy' 'a waste' etc. This insults our armed forces who have been trying to quell a barbaric area for 8 years, one that initiated hostilities AGAINST our culture, not the other way around.

All the arguments from this film are the same ones used against Vietnam 40 years ago, and guess what? Yes we lost there, but it was a different world then, one where superpowers tossed money and ideology at each other in 3rd world countries hiding behind thier nuclear 'shield' -- the world today is one where any 19 year old can sneak some 'mysterious liquid' on an airplane and kill 200+ because he thinks he'll get into paradise.

This is where the film fails : its message is that the 'wise' baby boomers who as hippies were 'so right' on vietnam are the ones whose wisdom we need today, when in fact, having been given academia, politics, and industry, they haven't managed to solve societies problems with their 'new ideas'. This film is basically a huge self-praising baby boomer circle jerk as the boomers sneer how we've 'failed' against islamic extreemists the same way we 'failed' in vietnam, but who has 'failed' when Iraq (for whatever reasons we went in there) is now an emerging middle east democracy and Afghanistan (which even the extreme left conceeds we MUST be in) is the focus of the world community to stomp out the extreemists who hold zero value for human life?

The one argument Redford makes I *can* get on board with is essentially "What use an 80k car if the roads are crumbling? Or no gas to put in it?" -- And yes, Gov't's primary responsibility, anywhere in the world, is infrastructure...but in pointing out problems with no solutions (other than the 'mandatory year of national service' thats been a leftie big government wet dream since I was in high school 20 years ago.) this film is just an empty excercise in leftie hand wringing.