August 16, 2005

Remember When Hollywood Wanted America to Win Its Wars? (Updated with link to video)

A friend of mine who works at a prestigious film school recently sent me a WWII cartoon produced by Warner Bros. and starring the voice of Mel Blanc. It reminded me that there was a time when Hollwyood put winning a war at the forefront of its agenda. There was a time when people like Michael Moore would not only have been booed off the Oscar stage and blacklisted--rigthfully so--but they would have also found themselves in a federal prison for incitement to treason.

Today Hollywood is either patently against our troops winning, full of moral equvication between our cause and the cause of our Islamofascist enemies, or full of bad news and defeatist messages.

The name of the film my friend sent to me is Rumors and stars the WWII anti-hero Snafu. The film may be downloaded by right-clicking this link and choosing 'save as' option, thanks to Drew at Conservative Friends. A brief synopsis of the film along with some screenshots and lessons that the Hollywood elite might learn from their glory days are posted below. I have the film in quicktime format, thanks to Bill Dauterieve, if any one would be willing to burn the bandwidth and has the server space (it's not large).

The film opens with Snafu and another soldier having a quality on-the-toilet discussion of the weather. A casual mention that it was 'good bombing weather' gets Snafu's wheels turning. Snafu embeleshes the comment and quickly a rumor begins about an enemy bombing campaign. A casual remark has become a demoralizing rumor. Loose lips sinks ships is generally thought of as a warning to keep information such as troop and supply movements a secret, but there is another message hear: idle talk may demoralize troops and lead to defeatism.

The rumor, which is mostly hot air is spread. With each new telling of the rumor it becomes worse and worse. Each new telling of it makes each new soldier that much more afraid of impending defeat. And like the films of Michael Moore and the rhetoric of Cindy Sheehan, most of the defeatist information is spin and hot air.

The defeatist stories continue and are depicted as bologne flying all over the place. An apt metaphor for the time and for the al Jazeeras and Michael Moores of today's world.

The rumor returns to Snafu in the form of a bologne sancwich, the soldier that began the rumormongering, striking fear into him and the rest of his base. Snafu runs and hides but the defeatist rumors continue and grow. Does the liberal media establishment actually believe the bologne that passes for unbiased war coverage? Yes, it does. It is cosmically ironic that the same institutions that decide to portray all of America's military efforts in the most pessimistic light are also the same institutions that believe the very biased messages which they helped create.

By now the rumors become something that today's MSM, fueled by the defeatism of the Left, would clearly recognize. The rumors now say that military machinery is insufficient to the job of winning. Does this remind you of MSM accounts of armour for our vehicles?

Our shells are all duds. Wait until you see their new secret weapon. You're doomed.

The defeatist rumors now claim our allies are abandoning us. We cannot possibly win this war alone.

The Russians have surrendered. The British are quitting. The Chinese gave up.

And in the end, what seemed like just a little white lie comes to this final defeatist message:

It's all over. We lost the war.

Snafu has become so terrified that he is driven to the point of being unable to fight and is put in a straight-jacket and a padded cell. Of course, once an army believes that it cannot win a war it has already lost. It is the same reason why our enemies continue to fight us in Iraq: fueled by the propaganda of the Left and their allies in the Arab media, they actually believe they can win.

In order to stop the spread of defeatist rumors the entire base is put under quarantine. Defeatism, like a viral infection or the plague, must be isolated and wiped out.

The final shot of the film reminds us that a good soldier sees, hears and knows nothing. He does not participate in spreading rumors that could lead to defeatism. Defeatism is the first step towards actual defeat.

Hollywood could learn a lot from Snafu. The role of the media is to bolster support for winning the war, not undermining it. Spreading defeatist messages does the job of the enemy for them. One phrase used to describe some one who unintentionally helps the cause of the enemy is useful idiot. But there is also another word used to describe those helping the enemy--for even the noblest reasons: traitor.

It should be recalled by students of history that the vast majority of traitors had a noble reason for betraying their fellow-countrymen. The common thread among them was that they believed they knew better than elected policy makers what was good for their country. Giving nuclear secrets to the Soviets, for instance, was for the nation's good because it would prevent the use of those weapons in the future. Traitors, in an act of dellusional self-rationalization, almost always believe that their betrayal was actually an act of patriotism.

Hollywood has betrayed the American people and U.S. soldiers actively engaged in a war-zone by spreading messages of doom, failure, and defeat. So positive of their own moral superiority, they rationalize the way in which they actively undermine our military efforts by claiming their defeatist propaganda is actually a form of patriotism. There was a time when the American media cared if we won our wars. Unfortunately, that time is long past.

Patriotic Hollywood, Rest In Peace.