The World Without US

I was a bit apprehensive about this film since it seemed to be such "one of a kind" so I had a look at their website before ordering. The trailer I saw really got my interest, the premise seemed to be so interesting and so timely for our nation. It reminded me a lot of another film, called "Why we fight?" (very popular about 2 years ago) trying to answer the same question, what is the purpose of the US meddling in the entire world? While "Why we fight" was a bit of a disappointment, this film really delivered on the promise. After the first twenty minutes you figure that the director is working an angle on the debate, but what I really liked is that he is building a really logical, coherent argument that I could follow from one end to another. And he surely supports it with footage from around the world.

I also liked the fact that it was more than an intellectual exercise. The film had some very touching personal stories that I didn't expect in a "geo-political" documentary. It made it one of those films that you still think about the second day after you saw it. As a minus, I wish the film makers also investigated some other regions also, say, South America or Africa... but I guess there is only so much time...

It's odd, but we happened to watch another unashamed propaganda film - perhaps propaganda is like buses, they arrive in clumps - we also watched a propaganda film about creationism ('Expelled'), this week.

Again, it's just Leni Riefenstahl re-make. Only somebody ignorant of history since WWII and naive to the techniques of emotional manipulation, lying by omission and logical fallacies would be persuaded by this rubbish.

Amazingly, for what claims to be a documentary, the film ends with a long clip from a post- apocalyptic science fiction film, full of scenes of destruction & weeping children - not as a reminder of what was done to Hiroshima and Nagasaki (and the firebombing of Tokyo), but to try to support the claim that the world needs the 'protection' of those who committed the atrocities to be safe....

I do wonder about this sort of propaganda. It can't actually be intended to persuade anybody who has a mind. I suppose that it must be, like Leni Riefenstahl's films, something to persuade those who follow the party line, but can't help having strong moral qualms, that the end justifies the means. Atrocities, massacres, assassinations and invasions are all fine, decent things to do, as long as they are done in the name of the right Fatherland.

I expected to see an objective look at what the rest of the world might actually do if the US military withdrew and left them in peace. Instead I got a triumphalist showcasing of all the USA's most successful military interventions, brought to us by a bunch of Ivory Tower foreign policy elites who would be scrubbing our floors if they didn't have fancy jobs in the State Department and university international studies departments.

I love how they skip right over US atrocities in Iraq to show how happy the Kuwaitis are that we protect them. I turned it off right there. I've seen enough American propaganda in my life. How about a movie that shows all the children around the world who have been killed by US bombing missions?

Although gimmicky at times, and full of unneeded "beating of the dead horse" examples of how horrible the human race can be, this film actually has a very interesting message. What would happen if the United States did not have a military presence overseas? Then one begins to see that in the last 100 years, the Unites States has not "invaded" another country without it explicitly being related to the fact the supreme leader of that region was directly responsible for genocide.

Rather or not the film was well done, it got the message across to me clear as day. As a human race in the 20th century, will we tolerate the possibility of genocide happening at any place at any given time? If the answer is no, then we simply cannot leave any of these countries until they themselves are capable of not letting that happen again. If your answer is yes, then the entire United States deficit problem would be completely taken care of in 8-10 years. As selfish as I may be sometimes, I myself am going to have to side with absolutely no genocide tolerated anywhere. We are beyond that as a species, and that simply cannot be tolerated in any way. How that train of thought ever escaped my thought process, well it beats me.

This film is a breath of fresh air in the group think that grips public opinion in US and worldwide. The content is well researched, supported by facts and number of credible insiders. It explains why the isolationist policy that US practiced before world wars is not the answer and how regional conflicts left intact can explode and come back to hunt us. Film reveals for example that, despite the outcry and huge material and life sacrifices, US firms did not have preferential treatment in Iraq.

It also shows that those who stand on the side of freedom and democracy world wide expect the USA to act to protect them and those ideals. US presence is the only thing preventing North Korea from invading South, China from invading Taiwan, Arab countries from invading Kuwait, Arab countries from invading Israel, Israel from invading West Bank etc. Now that threat of USSR has abated, European public opinion on this subject is naive and inadequate. Europeans born after 1980 have no memory of cold war during which the only thing standing between Stalinism and self destructed Europe was the US. How does all this compute for those who accuse US of imperialism? Looking at some of the reviews here, it doesn't.

Fact is that we may live to see the world in which US can no longer afford this role. Perhaps Europeans will take over and keep the world stable with considerable firepower of their cynicism.

@thornsthorns: If you consider that Japan was at war with China and Russia in Early 1930s WWII did start in Asia.