Raz is gonna love this documentary. Wish he was here to watch it with us tonight, but maybe we can see it together once he's back in the country.
The line that struck me the most was Hassan, talking about how the American people will defeat the American empire. Not only are we, perhaps, the only ones who can, we are certainly the ones most closely positioned to do it sooner rather than later.
Prem said he thought this movie was more powerful than Fahrenheit 9/11. I'm not sure, but the two together certainly pack one heck of a whallop. Control Room adds no editorializing, one simply sees what folks are thinking in the moment, as opposed to the narrative storyline that ties the incidents of F 9/11 together. Each movie reveals facts. F 9/11 makes its case explicit, essentially telling you what you ought to think, what the evidence means. Control Room is more subtle, it assumes the audience can piece the evidence together without guidance.
I found it both disheartening and encouraging. It is encouraging to see the commitment and integrity to a journalism that struggles with itself as it seeks to represent events in the world that we all must grapple with and are affected by. At the same time, it is discouraging to be reminded, once again, of the formidable barriers in the way to peaceful co-existence and collaborative modes of problem-solving. Lt. Rushing states the contradiction most clearly when he says that he doesn't like war but he doesn't believe we're ready to live in a world without war. I would suggest that most of us ARE ready to live in a world without war, but we must convince our political leaders that this is what they need to pursue, and that whatever costs or fears they have about peace's uncertain (?) outcomes need to be faced squarely and openly, without compromise or rationalization.
