The Terrible Necessity of No End In Sight
By Josh Bolotsky, Living Liberally
Perhaps what we'll most remember about this era of progressive politics is how many crises there seemed to be tasked to us to fix at once. Has any other era of American history had potential catastrophes which were quite so, well, catastrophic? Global warming, the pending energy crisis, the war in Iraq - none seems particularly amiable to the holding patterns of detente or deterrence, all calling for immediate attention like a sort of long-protracted Cuban missile crisis. With so many balls being juggled at once, it's no surprise that we occasionally lose sight of how we ended up juggling those balls in the first place, drowning in details instead of seeing the big picture.
It is due to this phenomenon that No End In Sight, a thoroughly compelling yet novice-friendly look at the errors made by Paul Bremer & Co. in the occupation of Iraq, is such a painfully necessary film - it calmly cuts through that morass of chronology and reminds us that the major mistakes made were in fact finite, and therefore retraceable. There is no one who would not benefit from seeing this film - those citizens who've tuned out of the news of the war for interest in Lindsay and Paris will understand why other folks are so angry; those who've been following the news in great detail will find it not just a refresher, but an invaluable clarifier; and those of us who deal in politics for a living will find an amazing teaching moment.
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