War, Inc.

Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye once said that 'literature has no purpose but to be literature itself.' And it's possible to extrapolate that position to say that no artistic endeavour - dance, music, film - has a purpose other than to be exactly what it is. But every once in a while there is a moment that transcends that and allows the artistic expression to be more, to be greater. War, Inc is one of those moments.

The movie, released on DVD this week, is a political satire that did not receive wide distribution when it released and more is the pity. The movie is smart, uncomfortable at times and one that can live on in your head long after you've hit the stop button on your remote.

Let's get some of the fluffier stuff out of the way, shall we? There is some seriously inspired casting for this movie. I could listen to Ben Kingsley call out bingo numbers so I'm easy to please but he is wonderful in his mania and while I normally would be tempted to scoff at the inclusion of Hilary Duff in anything, full marks to her and to those who thought to cast her.

Now on to the substance. This movie is dark and like most satires is probably closer to the truth than anyone would really be comfortable with. It is a funny, witty, smart indictment on where the G8 countries and the US specifically are headed with our occupations and "liberation" of poor backwards countries who have the temerity to insist on sovereignty and who don't toe the line imposed by others.

The problem in reality and so aptly demonstrated in the film is not conquering the country but rather what do we do with it once we have it? The Iraq War, the Afghan War, much like the fictional war in Turaqistan are as much about marketing as they are about freedom or democracy.

It amazes me the hubris that Presidents and Prime Ministers possess when they boldly announce that they are going to bring democracy to some country as if it is something that can be exported rather than organically grown within a country's borders. History has proven time and again that change, real directional, substantial change comes from the inside - through revolution - not from imposition of values that bear no resemblance to those of the conquered country. It was not Ronald Regan who convinced the Soviets to tear down the Berlin Wall, it was a movement started by the people whose lives were controlled by the Wall. It was not NATO nor the US who finally rid Serbia of Milosevic but it was the people who had determined they had enough.

I am offended that democracy is defined as the ability to hold elections or host a free market economy. Zimbabwe regularly has elections and despite out of control inflation and corruption that knows no bounds, Mugabe still reigns. That isn't democracy, just a reasonable facsimile - much like the 'freedom' offered to the citizens in Turaqistan in War, Inc.

In the movie the hero/anti-hero Brand Hauser, played with such deftness by John Cusack, regularly downs hot sauce as a way to cope with stress. What a brilliant allegory for how the world has remained largely unengaged with the future of Iraq, Afghanistan and other resource rich targets. Protests have decreased, not increased, as the wars have continued. And we seem to drinking down all kinds of hot sauce to distract us from what is really going on.

We have been seduced by the marketing, so distracted by the flash that most of us have gone eerily quiet. In Canada we tend to affect an ugly smugness in the false belief that we occupy some moral high ground that the US is unfamiliar with. There may - may - have been a time that was true but not any longer. Canada has become a brand unto itself in Afghanistan. We hand out backpacks and notebooks and all kinds of sundries with the maple leaf in full display. Our politicians board Hercules planes for the chance at a photo op replete with flak jacket and school children to prove to the people back home that we are achieving some kind of success.

And yet not a single person can reasonably articulate what the conditions for victory look like. Absent that information we very much run the risk of making Afghanistan, Turaqistan with our branding of freedom and democracy in full view but without actually delivering either.

Our silence is our complicity. And on Tuesday last, 41% of my fellow citizens opted to stay silent and not vote. Voting is a right but rights are not free; they come teeming with responsibilities and one of those is to show up, be heard and provide the government with a mandate so they can act in our name. How on earth can we be expected to gift that to another country when we're still working it out for ourselves?

There are situations in the world - Darfur, for example - that require the world's attention and intervention but for the most part we do not act. Those are not easy wins (though the case could be made that neither Iraq nor Afghanistan are proving easy in the long run, but the initial win was easy to come by) and really, who has the patience to see it through? The first rule of marketing is to create a need and then fill it. Our governments created a need for victory and then delivered on it. Too bad no one told the Iraqis and the Afghans about it.

I challenge you to watch War, Inc. And then watch it again. Then ask yourself if our governments' actions are a triumph of marketing over leadership.