The One Yemeni Law We Need: Execute Those Who Undermine Troop Morale
“Redacted” writer/director Brian DePalma.
Journalist faces possible death penalty over photos “liable to undermine army morale”.
Reporters Without Borders today urged the authorities to stop the prosecution of Abdulkarim Al-Khaiwani, a freelance journalist and former editor of the now closed weekly Al-Shoura, on a charge of “publishing information liable to undermine army morale” under article 126 of the criminal code, for which the maximum penalty is death.
Khaiwani was arrested in June after the publication of photos he had taken showing abuses committed by the army in its attempts to combat a Shiite rebellion in the north.
Now if only we could get congress to pass this law… ~Bash
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I don’t think execution is the right thing to do here. I think that a more fitting punishment would be to take these moral busters and force them to say what they said to the face of a infantry platoon. This should be done in country at a FOB, away from the cameras, and with no officers present.
If these a-holes can still look a platoon of soldiers in the eye and say the same things then they can then repeat it to whom ever they like.
That should be the vetting process and the litmus test for what is moral busting and what is free speech.
November 10th, 2007 at 2:19 pmCritic from the Brooklynn Rail(a lefts perspective)
DePalma runs a triple-helix of plausible deniability to disguise how hateful, empty, pandering and morally noxious his attempt at a U.S. army in Iraq portrait really is.
As in Casualties of War, nobody shoots sexual violence with more prurient, pornographic interest, and no one is quicker to deny his motives under the rubric of: ‘Don’t blame me—it’s war!
Can I help it if war is brutal, disgusting, dehumanizing and fought by the lower classes?’ DePalma’s clumsy attempts at dumbass American lumpen dialogue—presented in a series of preposterously over-wrought/over-shot supposedly ‘real’ moments—reveal a deep contempt for the characters he insists he views in all their humanity.
The film begins with formal conceits on a high-school level: one of the soldiers announces that, hey, guess what? He’s going to shoot a video of the war! With this here camera right in his very hands! Later, drama plays out in front of security cams, the only ones I’ve encountered with perfect sound recording capability.
It’s all so junior high…but the structure protects DePalma. He claims Iraq is a moral free-for-all and he’s the objective eye. It’s hard to convey the putrid corruption of Redacted: I felt unclean and enraged sitting there—as if I was colluding somehow just by watching.
Bottom line: DePalma exploits the pointless death and amoral waste of Iraq; exploits it for cheap violence, for rape, for class hatred, for the most arrogant groping after the moral high ground…all the while working overtime to convince us how sensitive he is.
It’s the artistic equivalent of appearing on an aircraft carrier wearing a flight suit in front of a banner that reads ‘Mission Accomplished!’ And should be greeted with equal skepticism.
November 10th, 2007 at 2:39 pmRx for DePalma, 1 busted larynx and a collapsed lung.
November 10th, 2007 at 3:14 pmCan we set up a Petition page? ; )
November 10th, 2007 at 3:24 pm