No One To Lose To

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In her 11.25 piece called "No One To Lose To," N.Y. Times columnist Maureen Dowd quotes former Times reporter Neil Sheehan, author of "A Bright Shining Lie," to wit:

"In Vietnam, there were just two sides to the civil war. You had a government in Hanoi with a structure of command and an army and a guerrilla movement that would obey what they were told to do. So you had law and order in Saigon immediately after the war ended. In Iraq, there's no one like that for us to lose to and then do business with."

In response to which Dowd writes, "The questions are no longer whether there's a civil war [in Iraq] or whether we can achieve a military victory. The only question is, who can we turn the country over to? At the moment, that would be no one."

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Posted by Jeffrey Wells on November 25, 2006 at 10:28 AM

comment #1

Larry says ...

And this is about movies because...?

Posted by Larry at November 25, 2006 10:49 AM

comment #2

Mr. Muckle says ...

Shit, Larry, is there some law that says Jeff can only write about movies? Do you only think about movies? Grow up.

Posted by Mr. Muckle at November 25, 2006 11:01 AM

comment #3

Larry says ...

Hey, if this were a political website, I'd point out that Dowd doesn't know what the hell she's talking about. (And Sheehan--don't get me started.)

However, this being Hollywood Elsewhere, why bother? We're two steps removed from reality.

Posted by Larry at November 25, 2006 11:05 AM

comment #4

Mr. Muckle says ...

Well, granted, there probably isn't enough space here to go into details about these things. But we can always practice being concise. I haven't read Dowd since they started charging for her, but still the point is worthwhile, I think.

I think it's nice to attempt to touch base with reality occasionally, even when we're only attempting to divert ourselves from it.

Posted by Mr. Muckle at November 25, 2006 11:09 AM

comment #5

Roddy Reta says ...

I guess that it's no surprise that Jeffrey Wells constantly goes to Maureen Dowd for all of his news, since they essentially operate at the same pop-piffle intellectual level.

Posted by Roddy Reta at November 25, 2006 11:35 AM

comment #6

DarthCorleone says ...

I think it's telling that the first instinctive reaction to this is to either question the appropriateness of Jeffrey's placing it in this forum or to simply cast aspersions at Dowd in lieu of discussing the merits of her message. I'm not an expert on Iraq, and I don't have any easy answers to what's going on over there. It just seems silly to me that we so easily resort to attacking the messengers instead of actually discussing why or why not Iraq is like Vietnam and who is or is not there to take over the country were our forces to leave.

We're just too damn politically polarized.

Posted by DarthCorleone at November 25, 2006 1:15 PM

comment #7

Peter T Chattaway says ...

"We're just too damn politically polarized."

But at least you have someone to lose to!

Posted by Peter T Chattaway at November 25, 2006 1:34 PM

comment #8

nola says ...

Seeing how entertainment and defense are the biggest American exports, I think JW's post is relevant. I think one reason most mainstream Hollywood movies suck is because many execs have no idea (and most don't care) about what is happening west of the 405.

Believe it or not Irag spiraling into a civil war does impact us in LALA land. It will be hard to keep selling mediocre movies overseas to people who have had it with anything American.

Posted by nola at November 25, 2006 3:59 PM

comment #9

vinod says ...

Ok, I don't know if this has already been mentioned in a previous discussion, but Lancet, the reputed British medical journal has published a study by Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health and Iraqi physicians which states that 655,000 people have died in the current war (or whatever it is that they're calling it these days):

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/10/AR2006101001442.html

That's right, more than half a million people killed. I hope no one points out that the number of dead have an anti-American bias.

Also, I don't think that anyone who reads Nir Rosen's article on the Iraqi civil war will ever want to think about the moral primacy of the US ever again. This isn't an ideologically driven piece, just matter-of-fact reporting and yet you cannot help but be overcome by the horror that the US has unleashed in that country:

http://www.bostonreview.net/BR31.6/rosen.html

Posted by vinod at November 25, 2006 9:53 PM

comment #10

christian says ...

this war george bush and his gang of business thugs have started make most of hollywood trivial to the extreme and the more emphasis the soulless execs and marketers place on vacuous product, the weaker our nation becomes.

the only justice left is for bush to be impeached and cheney, rumsfeld, gonzales and a few choice others to be charged with war crimes. just like their bitch saddam.

sadly, we all have to pay for their sins.

Posted by christian at November 26, 2006 1:24 AM

comment #11

Nate West says ...

Larry, you would have to be crazy to believe that the deaths of 655,000 people in Iraq will have no effect on foreign box office. I think the impact will be huge; and we will see it manifest itself most dramatically when Stallone's latest Rocky picture is released in Baghdad later next year. As for Neil Sheehan--don't get me started.

Posted by Nate West at November 26, 2006 3:20 AM

comment #12