Some Reactions to the Movie Vice
VICE, in these current times, was always going to be an incredibly divisive movie as people viewed it through their own partisan lenses. I won’t debate the accuracy of the movie or whether it was biased or not. Those with a better understanding of history will be able to examine these issues more rigorously than I can. I will also avoid discussing the quality of the movie (this is a particular discussion I like along that front).
Rather, I want to discuss two takeaways that the movie left me with that I think speak to uniquely American trends.
First, it emphasized that America tends to unite best when it is facing an external enemy. Americans came together after 9/11 in a way that they have not since. Patriotism for fighting back against terrorism became the norm for everyone in the country, and we wrote a blank check on policy to those in power in the name of combating that threat.
American practices a sort of blind patriotism whereby questioning the merits of aggressive tactics is generally seen as unpatriotic. This is obviously wrong because being skeptical of power and its use is distinctly American and built into the founders use of checks and balances and disdain for a monarchy.
Indeed it points as well to one of the most powerful juxtapositions in the movie with the contrast between insiders questioning the quality of intelligence on the Iraq War with the vocal support of politicians for the war across the aisle. Supporting war and counter terrorism always makes sense superficially to maintain public safety, pleasing the public that action is being taken.
We rarely though ask the counterfactual, which is what would have happened if we hadn’t done a particular bombing mission or battle. Supporters will point to straw man that you don’t know of the countless potential attacks this might have prevented, but this is meaningless because we have to make the best decisions today given the information available.
War is not always the best policy choice and indeed given the costs, it is often inferior to other methods. It is clear that there was little in the way of a post war plan for Iraq, and it was executed poorly, creating power vacuums that were filled by other terrorist organizations, making it reasonable to wonder whether spending that money on more traditional counter intelligence operations would have led to a better outcome.
Second, it exposed the lack of institutional checks on the power of the executive branch under those who supported war. If one of the central premises of the movie was in fact how reality played out, that Cheney single handedly with his cabal of friends orchestrated the Iraq War and subsequent conflicts in the War on Terror, it speaks to a concentration of power that the American system was designed to prevent.
Throughout the movie there are inklings in people that they do not support the decision to go to war or don’t understand the decision given the state of the evidence, but they are minor and drowned out within the movie and by the weight of Cheney and his operatives.
Declaring war should never become a process through which an individual actor can escalate conflict and use the bureaucracy of the executive branch to operationalize his or her plans.
These trends of blind patriotism under external threats and concentration of power within the executive branch interact in weird ways in American life. It makes us more likely to unconditionally support policies in the name of combating threats against American even when they have little evidence or common sense.
It raises the ability of political campaigns built on fear to garner wide public support and achieve power in this country that we need to understand and work to prevent by recognizing this tendency within our culture.
For all its flaws VICE captured thematic elements that speak to what it means to be American in a time of fear and crisis.
