On Thursday night, I had a chance to attend a special screening of Charles Ferguson’s Iraq war documentary No End In Sight, hosted by congressional candidate Dan Grant (who is an incredibly nice guy, BTW. Go Dan!).
No End In Sight is different than most anti-war docs, in that the interviewees are mostly folks who were involved in planning, executing, or cleaning up after the initial invasion–most of whom tried to bring some level of sanity to the proceedings, but were either ignored or expelled by the administration.
There is very little new info here–the film simply describes a series of well-known events as they happened in 2003. But somehow, seeing the events set out so clearly, and with such a steady eye, is both startling and maddening.
It’s a deeply depressing film for a lot of reasons, but the most horrific part is the realization that a very small group of people (I was going to say “cabal”, but that implies that they knew what they were doing in some regard) are in charge of such a massively important undertaking. What’s also shocking is that these people have so very little experience making these kinds of decisions, and that they have almost no short-term accountability for their actions.
I’m not sure what kind of release this film has right now, but I recommend going to see it if you can. I know for sure it’ll be at the Alamo South Lamar until the end of this week.