Did you know that there are evil, villainous people out there who want you dead? Usually they can be identified as ugly, brown, dune-coon Muslims, but occasionally they come in the form of slanty-eyed, yellow-peril chinks. These villains have no legitimate grievances and just want kill us because they hate freedom. It is not the least bit unlikely that a person would spend all that money and effort, building bombs and avoiding devastating legal consequences just to piss off thousands of people by ruining their lives, purely out of a hatred for freedom, while US-supported invasions and dictatorships have no impact on their decision to bomb us whatsoever. Anyone who finds that theoretical situation unlikely is a soft-headed, bleeding-heart liberal, socialist, pot-smoking, coke-snorting, bean-eating, vegetarian, cross-dressing, homosexual, hybrid-car-driving, hippie, communist, pussy who spends all day French-kissing Osama Bin Laden's tombstone and masturbating to their Noam Chomsky book!
We should all be shitting our pants with fear at this very real danger to the world, enhanced and aided by naïve leftists.
BUT... there is a light at the end of the tunnel! A saviour riding a white horse! ... And that saviour is... AMERICA! America will come riding to the recue once again with their genius plan to kill all the terrorists by invading random countries, bombing them into oblivion and pumping all their oil! America WILL find those terrorists and doesn't care how many random countries it has to bomb to bits, or how much oil it has to pump in the process! That's what being an altruistic hero is all about!
Remember, if we don't stand up to evil, evil will think we're a PUSSY!
If all that sounds stupid to you, it's because it is! And yet this pretty close to the message of Matt Stone and Trey Parker's mind-bendingly stupid, painfully bad movie, 'Team America, World Police!'
The completely serious plot of the movie, is that terrorist and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Ill wants to blow up the world for the sake of it, but when the SWAT team known as 'Team America' makes disastrous mistakes trying to catch him, all the liberal Hollywood actors attack Team America. This leaves Kim Jong Ill free to destroy the world and Team America's newest member Gary must then overcome the mental scars of these hateful liberal attacks in time to save the world. (I wish I were kidding.)
Though Team America is also critical of conservative policies, the criticisms are carefully restricted to complaints that the Bush Administration has fought terrorism imperfectly or poorly though with good intent. The movie makes it clear that it wishes a painful death upon those who would question the noble intent of American foreign policy.
I will now divulge into criticisms of the painfully stupid messages of the movie, just because I love torturing myself into a burning rage.
This is a picture of me after I've just watched Team America, World Police.
Painfully stupid message number 1: Liberals hate America and want to blame it for everything.
In Team America, World Police, the puppet character representing Alec Baldwin makes the following statement, in relation to a terrorist attack where Muslims blew up the Panama Canal. This attack was committed in response to a well-intentioned piece of US military intervention in Cairo gone wrong.
Puppet Alec Baldwin's commentary on these incidents was intended as a spoof of the liberal position on terrorism.
Puppet Alec Baldwin: Who should we blame for the terrorist attack? The terrorists? The people who supplied them with WMDs? No. Blame Team America! Their reckless disregard in Cairo brought on this violence today. Team America, the blood of the victims of Panama is on your hands.
I SERIOUSLY doubt that many liberals made an argument like that. I've never heard a liberal make any argument equivalent to that, even in a youtube comment, and I pay a lot of attention to American politics. In fact, not only do I think liberals weren't making this argument, but this movie came out during the aggressively patriotic Bush Administration, when liberals would be turned into a social pariahs or investigated by the FBI for even criticizing the war in ANY significant way, let alone actually twisting the truth about it.
This attempt to strawman liberals by saying that they just want to blame America for everything and give Islamic terrorists a blank cheque for mayhem is PATHETIC! It's a transparent attempt to provoke outrage, so that soft-headed, insane, paranoid, right-wing retards will react in self-righteous indignation without considering why liberals would do that! If anyone actually THINKS for one second they realise liberals have no reason or motivation to blame everything on America!
Matt and Trey don't seem to realise that it's not an either/or situation. Being against one side does not equal being in favour of the other side. It is possible to be against Bush's war AND Islamic terrorists.
In effect, Matt and Trey bought into Bush's false choice of 'you're either with us or you're with the enemy.' To them, wanting to understand what the terrorist's underlying motivations are, such as them being mad that America bombed them or backed an oppressive dictator to rule their country, is interpreted as 100% support for terrorist actions.
Hating a lot of what America has done will inevitably come up in the process of trying to get to the bottom of the problem, but OF COURSE hating America is not the end game of liberalism. Making things better is, and making things better involves criticism, which is why Matt and Trey's beloved America is being criticized. You can't make things better by jerking the US Government off as a reward for their disingenuousness, like this movie is doing.
The slogan at the top of this picture says 'putting the f back in freedom.' I wasn't aware that the f was missing from 'freedom.' I guess that means people have been spelling it as 'reedom.' Good thing this genius movie is here to correct that.
Painfully stupid message number 2: Americans are 'the good guys,' and liberals smear innocent corporations.
A comment by a puppet character portraying Hollywood liberal Tim Robbins said the following quote, in relation to explaining his theory that America's wars are done in the interest of corporate profit. The comment from the Tim Robbins character is meant to satirize the theory that war is about money rather than fighting terrorism, by making it look ridiculous.
Puppet Tim Robbins: Let me explain to you how this works. You see, the corporations finance Team America. And then Team America goes out, and the corporations sit there in their... In their corporation buildings, and, see, they're all corporation-y, and they make money.
What planet are you living on Matt and Trey? Earth to retarded dickheads: the problem with corporations is not that they make money, it's that they ruin innocent people to do it by giving money a higher priority than human rights virtually every single time. If they don't then they're not running their corporation right.
In this case, oil corporations have got the American Government working for them, especially the Republicans, and they want them to go invade Iraq so they can control the world's oil supply.
The reason for the denial of the fact that money is driving the Iraq war, is that Matt and Trey are trying to make the case that America is BETTER than the terrorists (liberals excluded), because the war is about fighting terrorism and HOW DARE anyone make unflattering comparisons to terrorists! This message is conveyed at the end of the movie in a scene that gives the world view that although America makes mistakes, there is a big difference between an asshole (foreign terrorist) and a dick (American government, World Police.)
The reality is there isn't that much difference. The main way in which the American Government has the moral high ground over the 9/11 terrorists, is that they have aimed to murder civilians in a way that is less direct and vicious. They still invaded knowing that civilians WOULD die, they were invading for selfish, thieving reasons and they repeatedly committed torture. But they didn't actually aim directly for any buildings that they knew for certain only had civilians (as far as I know), unlike the 9/11 terrorists.
That's hardly enough to make the Americans 'the good guys,' and this movie has justified America's wars of aggression through deception.
The reason that I say the Iraq war was undertaken for selfish, thieving reasons is because there IS significant evidence that it was done for the oil rather than to stop terrorism and that the Bush Administration did everything possible to avoid any peaceful negotiation with Saddam Hussein, which I will summarise as briefly as I can. I could provide much more evidence of the American Government's scheming and war-mongering, but I would be digressing too much.
a) Vice president Dick Cheney, the man who was probably pushing hardest for the wars because he even wanted to go into Iran, was a formerly the president of Halliburton (an oil company) which did very well out of the Iraq war because of all the oil that was pumped after the invasion. Given that it's Halliburton that's put the most money in his pockets he was probably incentivised to pay Halliburton back, by wrecking America for 8 years and blaming the mess on a chimpanzee in a suit.
b) Iraq has the second largest oil reserves in the world after Saudi Arabia. Whoever controls it can set the price and production levels and determine that the vast amount of the wealth flow back to them. According to Noam Chomsky, the US state department in 1945 called it 'one of the greatest strategic prizes in world history,' and a major theme of US foreign policy has been to make sure the US dominates it.
Chomsky also cites that in 1958 president Eisenhower said to his staff that there is a campaign of hatred against us (America) in the middle east. Not by the governments, but by the people, because they have the perception that America undermines democracies by supporting harsh, brutal, corrupt regimes, due to their interest in controlling the region's oil reserves. What's more, it's difficult to counter this perception because it's accurate. Furthermore, it ought to be accurate. America should be undermining democracies to get it's hands on middle-east oil.
Go to 10:12 of this video for the main points.
It had been long established that torture could get false confessions as well as real confessions because people will do anything to make the pain stop. In fact the original Chinese memo that the American government took these torture tactics from said 'ways to get false confessions.'
Ibn al-Shaykh Al Libi who provided the link between Iraq and Al Qaeda had been tricked into thinking he was going to be murdered by the Egyptian authorities by being buried alive. (Al Libi had to be transferred to Egypt because unfortunately it's hard to legally get away with burying someone alive in America.) They wrote in their notes at the time that they could see that he would say anything to make the torture stop, and seemed to be at a loss as to what to make up.
He confessed to a connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda because he couldn't take it anymore, and his confession got fed to the American people as though it were rock-solid evidence. This made invasion inevitable.
Remind me again how America isn't like the terrorists?
d) George Monbiot's article 'Dreamers and Idiots', shows that Saddam Hussein offered to give the US government almost everything they wanted. This included free access to search for weapons of mass destruction wherever they wanted, that he would submit himself to internationally monitored elections within two years, that he would support America's position on Israel and Palestine and even to give the US government rights over Iraq's oil. (Though apparently not enough rights to satisfy the corporate greed.)
All the while George W Bush was telling the public that it was his (Saddam's) choice as to whether or not America went to war, which if you think about it is pretty unlikely on it's face. A shitty little country like Iraq is unlikely to want to pick a fight with a country that could completely bulldoze it without breaking a sweat. Saddam didn't pick a fight with America because Saddam didn't want to get his arse kicked.
American politicians didn't need to believe Saddam was honest in his offers as they could have offered him an ultimatum, but they were always going to invade no matter what Saddam did.
Matt and Trey should really have been more sceptical about what their government told them, instead of conveying this complete bullshit, through this excruciating movie, about how the wars are all about stopping terrorists.
Painfully stupid message number 3: Liberals and terrorists are almost the same people.
In Team America, World Police the character depicting Michael Moore walks into Team America's headquarters with a bomb strapped to him and says 'Hey Team America! I've got something for you! Prepare to die!' Then he blows himself up, destroying Team America's headquarters.
At the end of Team America, World Police all of the crazy, violent, terrorist-enabling left-wing celebrities (except Michael Moore who has already blown himself up) decide they are going to use lethal force to stop Team America achieving their goal. Team America is then forced to fight and kill them all in various gruesome ways for the gratification of the viewer.
These are only the two most extreme examples of scenes where liberals were terrorist enablers or even actual terrorists. Given all the scenes and dialogue surrounding these moments, it can be assumed that the comparison of liberals to terrorists is intended as a serious political comment.
This seems hypocritical given that Matt and Trey were clearly butt-hurt about the conservative American Government being compared to terrorists by liberals, as evidenced by the types of mad, ridiculously unfair things they make their liberal celebrity characters say. Despite seemingly being against needless comparisons with terrorists, they think it's okay to suggest that liberals are terrorists. They've done the same thing that they don't like liberals doing, but unlike liberals they have no facts whatsoever to back their comparisons up.
The liberals on the other hand, had some ACTUAL serious concerns like the fact that innocent people were being killed, imprisoned and tortured, when they compared the American government to terrorism.
And honestly, given that the whole scene is a murder fantasy against people for exercising their anti-war liberal points of view, I can't help but take these scenes a little bit personally! I was against the war too and agree with a lot of the things that the movie makes fun of. I guess that means they wish death upon me, too.
This really crosses the line, from being satire to being just disgustingly WRONG!
No comments:
Post a Comment