The anti-Iraq War push is on in Hollywood, as recent U.S movies at the Venice Film Festival indicated. The entry by Brian DePalma, Redacted, reportedly applies to a tragic event in the Iraq War the veteran hack filmmaker’s usual sledgehammer, thoroughly unintelligent approach to cinema. As Reuters notes,

For pure shock value, Brian De Palma’s "Redacted" wins hands down, stunning audiences with an uncompromising reconstruction of the real-life rape of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and the murder of her and her family by U.S. soldiers.

De Palma claimed at the festival that the United States press has refused to report the full truth about the war—hence the title, Redacted, meaning purposely to leave things out of a report in order to protect people’s reputations—but absurdly meant that the press hasn’t been negative enough:

"All the images we have of our war are completely constructed — whitewashed, redacted," said De Palma, who is best known for such violent fictions as "Carrie" and "Scarface".

"One only hopes that these images will get the public incensed enough to get their congressmen to vote against the war," he added.

If the U.S. press’s biased reporting and commentary on the War, which has dwelled on casualties and suppressed information of the successes the war has accomplished (which are indeed very real and require reporting, even for those of us who think the U.S. presence should be concluded as soon as possible), hasn’t ended the war, certainly De Palma’s film has a good deal of work to do.

The incident De Palma depicts as central in Redacted certainly did happen and is well worth considering. But the conclusion a sensible person would draw is the exact opposite of what De Palma says. As Anna Nimouse observes in National Review Online today, the film is

reputedly your effort to “end the war.” That’s a great sentiment, and I applaud it. I just can’t stomach that you intend to effectuate that end by condemning the very soldiers, who through their own sacrifices, are permitting you to live the extremely privileged life you currently do. . . .

The event that inspired the movie resulted in the prosecutions and sentencing of those found guilty, an American justice that yet eludes most of the innocent civilian individuals who continue to be kidnapped and beheaded in Iraq.

As Nimouse (a pseudonym for a Hollywood actress) points out, De Palma’s film is the ultimate redaction itself (although she does not put it that way), as it depicts a single horrific incident and suggests that it represents the true, full reality of the U.S. presence in Iraq, when in fact the U.S. military is not only better disciplined and more honorable than any other in history, it is even better behaved than the civilian populations of America’s most leftist cities, the places populated by people who agree with De Palma and vote for the candidates he supports:

[C]rime statistics prove that we actually have the best-behaved military in history. In fact, if you extrapolate the figures, according to a New York Post article by Ralph Peters from August 3, a city of roughly equal size, like Ann Arbor, Mich., has shockingly higher rates of “equivalent” crime than the military. And let’s not forget that unlike the Birkenstock-wearing students of UMichigan, the military endures all the stress of combat to boot.

Consider as an even better example, laid-back Santa Cruz. As Peters points out:

The most dogmatically left-wing city in the United States is undoubtedly (the People’s Republic of) Santa Cruz, Calif. With a population of some 55,000—about a third of our current troop numbers in Iraq—Santa Cruz, where the Age of Aquarius reigns, had 503 violent crimes in 2004 (the latest statistics available) and a total of 3,665 crimes that would qualify for court-martials.

“Extrapolate those numbers to match our current troop strength, and you’d have a requirement for more than 10,000 court-martial equivalents. If Santa Cruz were as serious about punishing its criminals as our military is . . .”

De Palma’s film is clearly an enormous instance of the fallacy of special pleading, the attempt to create an argument by limiting the evidence one will consider. This would not matter except that De Palma has explicitly intended and presented his film as an argument about the U.S. military action in Iraq and that the conclusion he wishes us to draw is so blatant in his choice of subject matter and apparently in his treatment of it.

After all, to suggest that the U.S. military action in Iraq has been bad for Iraq, as De Palma is clearly claiming in choosing this outrage as his subject matter and in his public statements, is a testable hypothesis, and De Palma’s argument fails on the evidence. As Nimouse notes,

To argue that the war in Iraq ought to cease because a couple of soldiers have committed acts of injustice is untenable. To believe that simply by ending the war we will have real peace is just plain folly. And to join the self-indulgent ranks of the Hollywood peace police, by emotionally manipulating the American public through exploitative film is beyond irresponsible.

So, Mr. de Palma, if you think that by showing us the horrors of war you are going to dissuade us from fighting for peace and our way of life, or supporting our troops who do, please understand that we’ve already seen too much of the other side; we are already too aware of what the enemy has in store for us if we don’t fight them.

I can’t comment on the quality of the film itself, having yet to see it, but I can indeed comment on De Palma’s stated intentions in creating it.

Brian De Palma’s intent in creating Redacted has been thoroughly dishonorable and stupid.