A Reflection On A Futile And Pointless But Costly War

Rating: 9/10 (22 August 2018)

It's hard to know how to characterize this movie. Is it a comedy? A dark comedy? A satire? A war movie? Some combination or permutation of any combination of those and more? But whatever it is - I liked it! I thought it was a very well done spin on what really is the absolutely futile US war in Afghanistan - a country that never actually attacked the United States and a country that no empire (not the British, not the Soviet and not the American) has ever been able to conquer. It revolves around the character of Gen. Glen McMahon - known as "The Glenimal." He's a well known, high powered General who supposedly had great success in Iraq (?) using his strategy of SNORPP - "Systemic Negation Of Repetitive Procedural Practice." So they try to reproduce his strategy in Afghanistan - with no results. McMahon (played well by Brad Pitt) runs up against US troops who don't want to be there and who have no real idea why they're there or what they're supposed to do, Afghan troops who are lazy, drug addicted and completely uncommitted, allies who aren't willing to do much of anything - countries who've committed no more than a handful of soldiers, and then McMahon's visit to Europe - where France commits more troops (as long as they're not there for very long) and where Germany sends more troops (but won't allow them to leave the base.) Ben Kingsley offers a sadly accurate (in a satirical sort of way) portrayal of Afghan President Hamid Kharzai - who seems uninterested in anything at all. Karzai has a sort of "just let the Americans do it and leave me out of it" approach, but also shows that he gets the reality of the situation early on when, in a meeting with McMahon where the General details his "new direction," Karzai responds, "Sounds a lot like the old direction." And there's mutual contempt between American military and civilian leaders, up to and including the Obama White House. BINGO!
But for all that, the movie - through McMahon's strategy - makes some valid points. McMahon seems to understand that the reason you have insurgents is because you've invaded somebody else's country. And that you don't win wars by killing civilians. When you do that you only make more insurgents - thus, his mathematical formula for insurgency: if you have 10 insurgents and you kill 2, you don't have 8 insurgents, you have 20 because all the friends and relatives of the insurgents you killed become insurgents in response. In the end what was left was an increasing number of insurgents, an international coalition that just wanted out of this hell hole, centred on American troops who had no idea what they were supposed to do in this hell hole, led by an American General who understood some of the realities of this hell hole but couldn't stop the cycle.
I suppose in the end that's the over-arching message of the movie: this is a cycle. Commanding Generals come and go, and each new General replacing a predecessor who failed to get it done as the guy who going to get it done, but he doesn't and ends up replaced by a new General who's going to get it done - and so on, and so forth, ad infinitum. It's told mostly as a reflection on a Rolling Stone article - the writer narrates some of the story, and the balance of the story is about the reaction to the article, which offers details of some of the unflattering thoughts of McMahon and his entourage toward the US administration.
I really liked this movie. It's based on a book detailing the story of General Stanley McChrystal, who was appointed to the command in Afghanistan by President Obama. I thought it might have been just a little bit too long. The basic point (why does the US seem to be constantly at war and why does the US keep fighting wars that it can't win) could have been made more succinctly perhaps - but I'd call this a hard-hitting and pretty biting satire, that works - as does any good satire - on the basis that it's pretty much totally believable. (9/10)