Filmmaker blasts Bush Iraq strategy

"If Americans knew this history, Bush would be out in five minutes," documentary filmmaker Bob Taicher told a crowded Dodds Auditorium yesterday evening.

Taicher came to campus to promote his new film, "Rush to War," which criticizes the Bush administration's policies on the Iraq war. Wilson School researcher Zia Mian and Council of the Humanities fellow Chris Hedges, who wrote the bestseller "War is a Force that Gives us Meaning," joined Taicher for a discussion after a screening of the film.

The event was sponsored by the local Coalition for Peace Action and the University-based Princeton Peace Network.

The film examines many aspects of the Iraq war, from its motivations to its effects on the United States' reputation.

Citing U.S. action against Iran's Mohammed Mossadeq in the 1950s and Chile's Salvador Allende in the 1970s, Taicher placed Iraq as the most recent in a history of government policies that have deposed leaders — even democratically elected ones — whose policies may have threatened American interests, but not American security. In particular, the film questions the role U.S. oil interests played in the war.

"I don't think there's anything new in terms of abuse of American power," Hedges said.

In his film, Taicher also challenges the arbitrary selection and unethical treatment of detainees in military prisons, and the administration's attempt to cover it up. He quoted novelist Arundhati Roy, who said that the U.S. government is "like the Wizard of Oz. They've pulled the curtain back and you can really see the wheels."

A former serviceman alleges in the film that many Iraqi men "of fighting age" were detained for months without trials or evidence against them. In addition, the film criticizes the torture that has been used to extract confessions, noting that 108 people have died so far in U.S. custody. This treatment, Taicher says, has engendered hatred for the United States throughout the Arab world.

Taicher's film, which has been compared to "Fahrenheit 9/11," has not been picked up by major movie theaters or distribution studios, but he is currently traveling to cities and college campuses around the country to promote it.

Inciting positive action against the war is often difficult, Taicher said.

"I think the lack of a draft has a lot to do with the lack of public interest," he said, noting that the nationwide "World Can't Wait" campaign recently drew only about 2,000 marchers in Los Angeles and received a 10-second spot on CNN.

"I've given up on movements," Hedges added. "I believe individualist revolt is all we have left."