End Times – How America’s war machine per­pet­u­ates a false threat to liberty

Just as Rea­gan had Die Hard and Bush had The Dark Knight, so America’s 44^th Com­man­der in Chief, Barack Oba­ma, will come to be asso­ci­at­ed with spe­cif­ic films from the last eight years. So what exact­ly is Oba­ma Era Cin­e­ma, and what does it reveal about the world we live in today? Have your say @LWLies #Oba­maEraCin­e­ma.

What could a pair of recent films about America’s post‑9/​11 wars, one direct­ed by a far-left woman who has cri­tiqued mas­culin­i­ty and white suprema­cy in her films for decades, the oth­er by a 2012 Repub­li­can Nation­al Con­ven­tion speak­er, pos­si­bly have in com­mon? A cyn­ic might argue they are proof of the cal­cu­lat­ed ambi­gu­i­ty of Hol­ly­wood films.

Dur­ing these polit­i­cal­ly polarised times, lean­ing too far to one side risks alien­at­ing half of poten­tial tick­et-buy­ers, so film­mak­ers have to hedge their bets. It is hard­ly sur­pris­ing that both Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thir­ty and Clint Eastwood’s Amer­i­can Sniper prompt­ed count­less think pieces attempt­ing to ascer­tain their beliefs about the Iraq War, tor­ture, mas­culin­i­ty as it relates to war, patri­o­tism, and just about every­thing else they address. But pol­i­tics on indi­vid­ual issues aside, both films reveal a wider real­i­ty about a new­ly blood­thirsty Amer­i­ca still strug­gling to find viable for­eign pol­i­cy strategies.

The heroes of both films are relent­less and task-mind­ed, pur­su­ing their mis­sion even to a fault. On one hand, Amer­i­can sniper Chris Kyle (Bradley Coop­er) is a ​“Texas patri­ot” pro­tect­ing fel­low sol­diers and killing the ​“sav­ages” in Iraq. On the oth­er, Kyle’s reck­less bravu­ra endan­gers his troops, while East­wood pays equal atten­tion to Kyle’s dis­tressed wife back home and PTSD is vis­i­ble in both the small­est ges­tures (note the way Kyle bows his head after each kill) and in more direct plot points. In the open­ing scene, a moth­er hands a grenade to a child who attempts to throw it at US troops before being killed by Kyle. The moth­er picks it up and attempts to do the same, but Kyle kills her too. Why a moth­er and child? US forces must already have killed the father, sug­gest­ing vic­tims’ fam­i­lies are like­ly to fall into a cycle of terrorism.

The actions of Zero Dark Thirty’s Maya (Jes­si­ca Chas­tain) are also not with­out implied con­se­quences. After fol­low­ing a lead for a decade and over­com­ing doubt from her col­leagues and supe­ri­ors, the US com­mands the raid that gives the film its title and its most dra­mat­ic set-piece. There is no hero­ism in this raid. Gun­shots make pops rather than the bangs of pre­ced­ing scenes. It is far too qui­et for a place over­run with armed sol­diers and inhab­it­ed by ter­ror­ists, yet it is the cries of chil­dren that pierce the soundscape.

Indeed, it is these chil­dren, heard repeat­ed­ly and seen fre­quent­ly, com­pared to only the briefest glimpses of Osama Bin Laden, that the set piece empha­sis­es. When Bin Laden is killed, chil­dren are orphaned and moth­ers are heart­bro­ken. The next day, Maya sheds tears because… why? For the dead fathers and hus­bands? Because after a decade of push­ing social aspects of her life aside in the name of work, she sud­den­ly lacks a pur­pose? Because America’s vin­di­ca­tion changed lit­tle and sig­nals the con­quest not of jus­tice, but revenge? It’s hard to say.

As Maya pur­sues one tar­get in the name of her coun­try, Kyle does the same for the troops. His foil is a sniper who, over the course of the four tours depict­ed in the film, kills sev­er­al of Kyle’s allies – some because the Pun­ish­er insignia on his squad’s gear is a give­away. The brand­ing, tak­en from an ear­li­er scene depict­ing a sol­dier read­ing the com­ic, is cru­cial: The Pun­ish­er is less a super­hero than an exam­ple of vig­i­lante jus­tice tak­en too far, per­haps as a result of his own PTSD when his fam­i­ly was killed. He los­es sight of jus­tice and becomes the judge, jury and exe­cu­tion­er of those who hap­pen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Kyle’s iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with the char­ac­ter offers a look into his own shat­tered psy­che. When he final­ly kills the sniper, East­wood under­lines the grav­i­ty of the moment with slow-motion, giv­ing the kill a neo-colo­nial­ist under­tone, to which an ally affirms, ​“mis­sion accom­plished,” echo­ing Bush’s pre­ma­ture call. Jus­tice? Kyle spu­ri­ous­ly blames his PTSD not on being forced to kill women and chil­dren, but on his inabil­i­ty to pro­tect more of his allies. ​“There’s plen­ty of guys here that need sav­ing,” he is told. The ending’s trag­ic irony – spoil­er: Kyle is killed by anoth­er PTSD-afflict­ed vet­er­an he is try­ing to help – is not inci­den­tal. Whether PTSD sur­faced from killing too many or los­ing too many, the war has end­ed but the dam­age con­tin­ues to play out back home.

That dam­age was itself reflect­ed with shock­ing pre­science in Bigelow’s film. From the audio record­ings of 11 Sep­tem­ber, 2001 played over a black screen, to the epony­mous raid, the only mark­ers of time in Zero Dark Thir­ty are con­comi­tant with ter­ror­ist attacks. Col­laps­ing around a decade of time into around two-and-a-half hours, it’s easy to lose track of when exact­ly each scene takes place. The break­through that will even­tu­al­ly lead the USA to Osama Bin Laden sur­faces ear­ly but lies dor­mant for years, and col­leagues come and go. But every once in a while, a spe­cif­ic date is shown: 29 May, 2004; 20 Sep­tem­ber, 2008; 30 Decem­ber, 2009.

Those are the dates of the Kho­bar ter­ror­ism attack, the Islam­abad Mar­riott bomb­ing, and the Camp Chap­man attack. When Zero Dark Thir­ty was released in Decem­ber 2012, we might have been tempt­ed to add to them the Sandy Hook Ele­men­tary school shoot­ing on 14 Decem­ber, 2012. Today, we have 7 Jan­u­ary, 2015, the date of the Char­lie Heb­do shoot­ing; 13 Novem­ber, 2015’s assault on the Bat­a­clan in Paris; the San Bernadi­no shoot­ing on 2 Decem­ber, 2015; in Brus­sels on 22 March; Istanbul’s Ataturk Air­port on 28 June; Nice on 14 July, and count­less oth­ers, dis­missed by the media for tak­ing place in the Mid­dle East or for­got­ten to ​“ter­ror­ism fatigue” in the West. We live in a world in which we expect the next big attack to be fol­lowed short­ly by anoth­er. The war is over, but new ones have already begun in the direct aftermath.

What both films cap­ture is the real­i­ty, dis­sem­bled by the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion, that there is no end to the num­ber of ter­ror­ists who can be killed in mak­ing illu­so­ry progress. The only real vic­to­ry would be poli­cies that stop cre­at­ing ter­ror­ists. That means tak­ing a long look in the mir­ror and embrac­ing rather than alien­at­ing local and inter­na­tion­al Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ties and nations and abstain­ing from killing inno­cent civil­ians regard­less of the cold­ly cal­cu­lat­ed short-term ben­e­fit for starters. Ulti­mate­ly, Maya’s tears are the same as those which Chris Kyle holds back: they are the tears of a nation and its con­stituents forced to come to terms with the fact that the best efforts even of heroes are not enough if the goal was taint­ed all along.