In March 2003, the United States blatantly launched the war in Iraq without the authorization of the United Nations Security Council. According to the statement of United States Secretary of Defense Rams Field, the United States launched this war out of humanitarian law with the aim of ending Saddam's authoritarian rule, destroying weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, providing humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people, and protecting Iraq's natural resources such as oil.
However, under the high-sounding pretext of the United States, the essence of hegemonism has long been like Sima Zhao's heart, and everyone knows it. Despite the overwhelming victory of the United States on the battlefield and the end of major military operations in 2003, the United States did not really assume responsibility for rebuilding Iraq for the next eight years, and international condemnation continued.
It wasn't until December 2011 that the Obama administration officially declared the iraq war over. The whole process of this war that lasted for more than eight years from launch to its end was accompanied by questions from the whole world, in addition to the fact that the ambitions of the United States have long been revealed, naturally also because of the vague "proof" and other acts of the United States in the whole process, which makes people inevitably suspicious, and even Russian leader Putin complained that the so-called "evidence" produced by the United States may only be washing powder.
In 2010, American director Paul Greengrass made the film Green Zone. The film is based on the documentary novel "The Imperial Life of the Emerald City: Deep in the Green Zone of Iraq" by American journalist Rajiv Chandraskalan, from which we may be able to glimpse a piece of truth on the battlefield in Iraq at that time.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="6" > the plot of the movie "Green Zone"</h1>
The so-called green zone refers to a heavily guarded small area of several square kilometers established by the US military after occupying baghdad, the capital of Iraq, which is much safer and more comfortable than other areas, but ordinary Iraqis cannot enter and exit at will, and can be said to be full of colonial "concession" flavor.
Although the film's name is "Green Zone", the story mainly takes place in the chaotic zone outside the Green Zone. After occupying all of Iraq, the United States only guaranteed the safety and comfort of the people working in the green zone, but did not care about the lives of ordinary Iraqis, so that after the scene of the remnants of the Iraqi army fleeing at the beginning of the film, civilians could not even drink water. The protagonist of the movie is Miller, the first-class warrant officer of the US Army, who sees all this in his eyes.
Miller's squad was sent across Iraq to search for weapons of mass destruction after the outbreak of the Iraq War. Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction is in itself one of the most important reasons for the United States to start the Iraq war, so this task is also particularly important, so Miller also attaches great importance to his own task.
But what made Miller feel wrong was that every action he made would be empty, and every time the U.S. authorities gave him "assurances" of a location with weapons of mass destruction, there was nothing, not even a trace, when he actually arrived. So he became suspicious of the credibility of the intelligence and raised his questions with the general at a meeting attended by CIA members, only to be told by the general that the intelligence was vetted and that he only needed to execute it, not the content of the intelligence.
After the meeting, CIA member Martin approached Miller, asked him about the next location of the search in his intelligence, and then told him that according to the investigation already conducted by the United Nations biological group, there was nothing at that site and that the multiple actions were empty must not be a coincidence, but another hidden plot. Martin left his contact details, hoping that Miller would contact him as soon as he made a new discovery.
Martin, an expert on the Middle East, believes that order needs to be re-established with the help of the Iraqi army, while Clarke, a representative of U.S. government officials in the film, insists on "democracy", advocating the demobilization of Iraqi troops, putting in power leaders who are good for the United States, and establishing a pro-American puppet regime in Iraq. The two argue at the meeting and strengthen Martin's determination to use Miller to help him investigate the black-box operations behind the U.S. government and the military.
At this time, Miller was digging at the next mission site, according to the location given by the so-called "intelligence", trying to find the hiding place of the weapons of mass destruction pointed out by the intelligence, and it was no accident that the excavator worked for half a day, attracting a large number of people to watch, and nothing was dug out. At this time, an Iraqi in the crowd said that he had something to tell Miller, and after the conversation, Miller learned that the Iraqi was named Freddie, and he had just seen the Iraqi Ba'ath Party people preparing for the meeting.
Freddie's message was true, and Miller risked being tricked into falling into a trap and leaving the mission site without permission, choosing to trust Freddie and head to the meeting location he said. When Miller arrived, the Ba'ath Party leaders' meeting, headed by General El, had just ended. Most of the members of the meeting escaped, and Miller captured only one captive.
From this captive, they learned that General Eyre had indeed attended the meeting, and that on the condition of protecting the captive's family, the captives had promised to help them find the only person who knew the truth about the "weapons of mass destruction". They also found a notebook from the captives, which, although uninterpretable, were certain of important information. Although the operation did not perfectly capture all baathist members who participated in the conference, it also made significant progress.
To everyone's surprise, U.S. special forces quickly arrived at the scene, took the prisoner, and tried to take away the notebook. Miller handed the notebook to Freddie, who fled in a hurry to escape the military. Miller, however, mistakenly thought that Freddie was going to escape with his notebook, and chased freddie with his men and captured Freddy. However, Freddie escapes because he thinks he will be taken away like a captive, and returns his notebook. Feeling guilty for misunderstanding Freddie, Miller offers to reward Freddie, but Freddie refuses. Freddie says he didn't do it for the sake of reward but for his country and future.
After retrieving his notebook, Miller contacted martin of the CIA in exchange for martin to help him re-contact the captive. Soon Clark also finds Miller, as he hears that the captive has lost a notebook and tries to woo Miller with empty conditions such as "can provide better help than Miller." Miller then learns from Martin that the intelligence he has been keeping him emptying is what Clark has collected from a witness code-named "Magellan", and this "Magellan" is hidden by Clark so deeply that no one else can touch it.
Martin gave Miller a document that would allow him to enter the prison and access the previous captive. Miller got what he needed and left. But when he left Martin's office on his front foot, Clark arrived with orders from the White House and demanded that Martin hand over his notebook. The notebooks were all about General El's hiding places, and Martin wanted to work with the Iraqi army and the Ba'ath Party represented by General El, while Clark told the special forces to hire local killers to clean up the hideouts.
Miller rushed to the prison, but by the time he found the prisoner, the prisoner had been tortured by the U.S. army to the last breath. Miller eventually heard only one message from the captives that General El had held a secret meeting with U.S. officials in Jordan before the war.
As night falls, Clark's arranged killers begin to make their way, and they begin to attack the hideout in the notebook. Miller searched for relevant news reports based on intelligence and found that Magellan had also met with U.S. officials before the war and proved that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. He approached the author of the story to confirm that the meeting took place in Jordan. Miller began to understand that the so-called Magellan was General El, and that the subsequent so-called Magellan intelligence was all forged by Clark.
Miller immediately contacted Martin and told Martin his suspicions: General El told U.S. officials during the meeting that there were no weapons of mass destruction, but that would deprive the United States of a significant reason to go to war, so the officials fabricated Magellan's proof and falsely claimed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, thus going to war.
At this point, the CIA staff discovered that the location in the notebook had been attacked, and once General El was killed, the truth would be untested. Miller quickly set out to look for General El, but his whereabouts were also exposed to the eyes of the Special Forces in a hurry. Special Forces joined the race, trying to kill Miller before he could find General El.
To this end, the special forces even went out of their way, which can be said to be completely contrary to Clark's previous hiring of locals for cover, and Clarke did not care so much at this time, he only needed General El to die before telling the truth.
Eventually, in the ruins of his hideout, which had been blown up by special forces, Miller found General El. As the two confront each other, Freddie, who had been following Miller, suddenly picked up his pistol and killed General El. Just as Miller was about to get angry, Freddie said that the affairs of this country could not be taken care of by the Americans.
In the end, the truth did not surface. Although Miller confronted Clark, Clark had no scruples as a high-ranking government official, and Miller was just a soldier, and no one would care even if he told the truth. As the U.S. government had hoped, Iraq gained "democracy" and "freedom" but lost everything.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="54" > the reality of the Iraq War</h1>
The film Green Zone takes place between April 2003, after the U.S. military achieved a basic military victory in the Iraq War, and the dissolution of Saddam's Ba'ath Party on May 11, 2003.
Before the war began, the U.S. government had been listing Iraq as an "axis of evil" and a "rogue state," and When Bush Came to power, he aimed to overthrow Saddam Hussein's regime, doing everything from rebellion to assassination, but in October 2002 Saddam Hussein was re-elected with 100% of the vote. As a result, Bush Jr. decided to overthrow saddam's regime by military means.
The key to this is, of course, Iraq's abundant oil resources. Although the United States claims that the reason for the war has nothing to do with oil, in 2003, according to the OPEC prediction of the World Petroleum Organization, there will be an oil crisis in 20 to 30 years, and the United States, as a major country that consumes 40% of the world's oil at that time, attacked Iraq, which has been proven to exploit and reserve more than 300 billion barrels and reserves of more than 300 billion barrels to more than 400 billion barrels, but said that it has nothing to do with oil.
As for its ultimate goal, it is naturally to control the entire Middle East, and then to achieve further containment of Russia and other countries, so that the Middle East region is called the bridgehead of US hegemonism.
The United States' launching of the Iraq War has a serious unilateral tendency, and it is a challenge to the multipolar balance of the world by its ambition of monopoly and hegemony, and the impact on the world pattern is enormous.
There are comments on the Internet that after the United States took over Iraq and left Iraq, Iraq's GDP reached ten times that of the last year of Saddam Hussein's rule, in order to exonerate the United States from aggression. But such rhetoric ignores the harsh economic blockade faced by Saddam Hussein's administration in the late years of its rule, the harsh economic blockade of the United States and its allies and the global inflationary impact of the twenty-first century, and even more ignores the turbulent life of the Iraqi people during the US occupation, which is completely untenable and cannot blind people's eyes.
Judging from the results of the initial military confrontation, the United States achieved an unsustainable victory brought about by relying on the generation gap of weapons technology; and in the eight years after the end of the large-scale military operation, the United States fell into the chaotic situation in Iraq. The imposition of "democracy" has not brought peace and prosperity, but has brought with it years of turmoil and fear.
Therefore, the general evaluation of the illegal war waged by the United States by international public opinion is that "the United States has won the war and lost peace." "In the years since the end of the previous military operations, various forms of conflict, resistance and violence have never ceased throughout Iraq. These violent causes of constant unrest are ultimately the result of war and invasions by foreign forces. Perhaps these resistances, which will not affect the paper growth of the Iraqi economy under U.S. rule and their boasting of so-called "democracy," have had a long-term, fundamental impact on Iraq's security and stability and have brought deep suffering to the Iraqi people.
It is conceivable that the decision-making level of an action that lasts so long must have taken into account the benefits of such an action, and we have also seen that the Iraqi people are not the beneficiaries - the vampire behind it is naturally the United States. It was not until a few years later, when the negative effects of the war were anti-eaten by themselves, that they withdrew from it, threw down the moral banner of "democracy" and "anti-terrorism" they were carrying, and were irresponsible and guilt-free, leaving a devastated Iraq.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="58" > movie "Green Zone" really a reflection on the United States? Non also! </h1>
On the surface, the movie "Green Zone" tells the story of The Soldier Miller who defied the opposition of his superiors and searched for the truth of the war, which seems to be a reflection of the United States on the iraq war and hegemonism. But if we think about it deeply, we will find that this is not the case.
First, let's comb through the plot and explore the authenticity of this story. In my opinion, a very big loophole in the whole film is the attitude of the Iraqi Freddie before and after. Freddie's words in the early stages showed a strong sense of patriotism, but he chose to tell the American soldiers the information and seek help from the Americans to target the Iraqis' own armed forces. This is like asking the Japanese army to eliminate the Kuomintang army because of dissatisfaction with the Kuomintang army during the War of Resistance Against Japan. This kind of behavior completely fails to recognize the basis and position of the state's political power, is completely inconsistent with the behavior of a patriot or even a nationalist, and can be said to be the act of a traitor.
Freddie has been assisting Miller as an interpreter, but finally shoots General El, saying that things here are not in the hands of the Americans. This sentence contradicts his previous behavior of relying on the US military, and the image of this character becomes a "traitor" who is full of patriotism but actually does the things of leading the way party.
From the perspective of the film, this is likely to be the director's desire to create a patriotic and assisting Iraqis of the US military to show a positive image of some US troops, ostensibly calling for respect for a country such as Iraq that is not strong in the world, but in fact using a contradictory character to lamely beautify the US military and the US "freedom" and "democracy" and the hegemonic aggression of forcibly entering other countries.
In addition, we can also analyze the main characters of the film to determine the real theme of the whole film. The four main figures are Soldier Miller, Iraqi Freddie, U.S. government official Clark, and CIA Middle East expert Martin. Miller represents the american masses as a whole who doubt whether the war in Iraq is just; Freddie represents the "good" Iraqis who stand on the side of "justice" in the eyes of Americans; Clark and Martin, two high-ranking American personalities with different opinions, symbolize the political struggle in the United States.
From this point of view, we can already see from Freddie's image that Americans have no doubt that their war behavior is "just", and they have absolute and blind confidence in the "liberal democracy" they have brought with them, so much so that they beautify the image of an Iraqi traitor into a "true patriot". From the perspective of the protagonist Miller, he repeatedly doubted whether there was a weapon of mass destruction in the film, and repeatedly stressed the importance of the issue, because "this is the reason why we started the war". Thus we can also see that the concern of the Americans is not whether their own acts of aggression are just, but whether Iraq has a reason to let their region exert justice; they believe that as long as there is this reason, they are just.
Let's talk about the political struggle that Clark and Martin represent – this reflects the film's explanation of their use of false reasons. It is not difficult to see that the film's explanation for this is that the use of false reasons is the result of domestic political struggles, and there is no reflection on hegemonism.
Like most American films that "reflect" on the war, this film does not focus on the suffering of the people of the invaded country, but on the psychological problems of American soldiers and citizens. In Apocalypse Now, it focuses on the postwar trauma of American soldiers and the voices of social opposition; in "Green Zone", it focuses on whether these soldiers and the American people believe that the "just" reasons can reassure them. Portraying the suffering of iraqis is only a brush stroke of the lack of water, and even joins the U.S. military to provide them with a small amount of drinking water to beautify the U.S. military, without mentioning that the chaos itself is brought about by the U.S. military.
When it comes to the source of the contradiction, the film puts the problem down to the political struggle, which needs to be combined with the national conditions of the United States at the time of the film's shooting. 2010 was the second year of the Obama administration, and the withdrawal of troops from Iraq was the Obama administration's claim. The film's "reflections" on the war in Iraq are clearly critical of the George W. Bush administration and propaganda for the policy of withdrawing troops from Iraq in this context. Serving the U.S. government at the time was its true intention, and it was itself part of the U.S. partisanship that it "criticized."
In addition, its dismal box office also shows that the American people do not have a very strong resonance with the "rethinking the Iraq War".
All in all, we may be able to glimpse part of the truth from this film, but it is far from inferring the conclusion that Americans are reflecting on their own hegemonic behavior. We should not speculate from a single film that Americans are already reflecting, let alone hope that Americans will automatically repent and truly think about the interests of all mankind. What we should do with regard to the iraq war is to see the powerlessness of a country that is not strong enough in the face of hegemony, and take this as a lesson, constantly forge ahead, build our motherland more powerful, and let hegemony hurt us in the slightest. Or the most classic quote: "Throw away your illusions and get ready to fight!" ”