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Three Kings: Cinematic Lessons for the War on
Terror
by Rob Waring
If you are ready to regain
a healthy skepticism about America's use of military power in
the post-9/11 era, there is a film at your local video store
available to assist you. I skipped Three Kings by director/screenwriter
David Russell (Flirting with Disaster) when it was released
in the final months of the twentieth century, because the studio
promoted it as an action/adventure flick. However, Amazon.com
describes it as "a confident hybrid of M*A*S*H, Treasure
of the Sierra Madre, and Dr. Strangelove," and
that's pretty close. I would add Catch-22 to that list,
and argue that Three Kings is the best film to date about
the morality of America's military policing actions.
 The setting is the
Gulf War (Operation Desert Storm), immediately after the 1991
cease-fire. The U.S. and its allies had just completed a military
campaign that killed more than 100,000 Iraqis and destroyed the
civilian infrastructure of Baghdad. After regaining control of
Kuwaiti oil fields, America stopped the war abruptly, leaving
Saddam the Satan still in power. Groups in the south and north
then rose up in rebellion at the U.S.'s urging, but unchallenged
Iraqi soldiers were slaughtering whole villages. (Some of the
survivors serve as extras in the film.)
The number of Americans killed was so small that deaths from
accidents and friendly fire exceeded the number killed by the
enemy. Most U.S. troops never saw any bloodshed; as portrayed
in the film, the war for them was like a camping trip in the
desert.
Russell could not have foreseen that his film, where U.S. soldiers
operating as outlaws bully Arabs by flashing bogus letters of
authorization from President Bush, would have such hyper-relevance
in 2002. As we struggle to reconcile basic tenants of international
law and humanity with America's War on Terrorism, Three Kings
serves as a reminder of how national self-interest and hubris
can warp ethics. (The U.S. was all too eager to invade Afghanistan,
but now wants little to do with making it work as a nation.)
The theme that assaults viewers repeatedly is that most Americans
did not see the reality of the Gulf War. U.S. military commanders
believed they were fighting a media war, in which winning American
public support for the conflict was as important as any military
effort to "liberate" Kuwait and "defeat"
Iraq. Sound bites that seemed reasonable to American ears when
coming out of the mouths of State Department or Pentagon briefers
are laughable in the film when uttered by infantrymen who confront
Iraqi soldiers, revolutionaries and refugees.
The comedy is at its darkest when an Iraqi army interrogator
asks an American soldier he is torturing to explain the difference
in their causes, and the soldier (played by Mark Wahlberg) answers
in sound bites. The soldier's shallow justification of the need
to liberate the people of Kuwait (one of the world's richest
nations) seems even more ridiculous than his dark-skinned torturer's
desire to exact revenge for the pain suffered by black pop singer
Michael Jackson--forced into plastic surgery to conform in a
white world.
Another scene lampoons America's expectation that other peoples
would blindly follow because America is right. (One post-Gulf
War effort was in fact called "Operation Just Cause.")
George Clooney, as the leader of an outlaw incursion into Iraqi
territory and one of the "kings" in the title, tries
to obtain a fleet of Kuwaiti limousines "liberated"
by the Iraqis. Playing a caricature of Uncle Sam in an army recruiting
poster, he tries to con Iraqi dissidents into giving him the
cars so that he can help them fulfill President Bush's desire
that they rise up against Saddam. They join in his pro-American
pep rally, but, seeing through his exploitation and false promises,
demand payment in full.
Just as during the realm of George I, American officials today
explain questionable military and human rights policies by saying
that we are the good guys--therefore policies in our national
interest must be just and everyone should follow us (that, and
the fact that we are strongest military power in the world).
The overriding message in the film is that those with institutional
values can only see the goals of those institutions. They ignore
any reality--no matter how inhumane--that conflicts with those
goals. In the new world order, America's narrow wartime agenda
has nothing to do with bettering the lives of Arabs.
The film brings this home when, in the end, Clooney and his "kings"
face a terrible choice. As outlaws who have rejected institutional
values, they are only people capable of humane action.
Posted April 5, 2002
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