Saturday, January 05, 2008

What If America Were Invaded and Occupied?

"Suppose Iraq invaded America. And an Iraqi soldier was on a tank passing through an American street, waving his gun at the people, threatening them, raiding and trashing houses. Would you accept that? This is why no Iraqi can accept occupation, and don't be surprised by their reactions," says "The Imam," a young man from a mixed Sunni-Shia family, as he explains the genesis of the insurgency in Iraq and its exponential growth.

He is one of the protagonists that Meeting Resistance presents as unmistakable evidence that the root cause of the conflict in Iraq is the occupation itself. The film has resistance fighters themselves tell their story.

Journalists-turned-filmmakers Molly Bingham and Steve Connors were compelled to film this documentary during their early reporting of the U.S. occupation of Iraq. They used the al-Adhamiya neighborhood of Baghdad to explore and depict an insurgency that has been caricatured by the Bush Administration.

Bingham, who has reported previously from Rwanda, the Gaza Strip, and Iran, was the official photographer to the Office of the Vice President of the United States from 1998 to 2001. She believes that it is imperative to understand the people within the resistance if the United States is to find a solution to the Iraq quagmire.

Bingham teamed up with Connors, a photographer who has covered ten conflicts and is a former British soldier who served in Northern Ireland in the early 1980s. Between the two of them they share thirty-three years of experience in covering conflicts around the globe.

In August of 2003, they began working on the film. The project kept them in Baghdad for ten months, as Connors filmed and Bingham wrote the script.

The eighty-five-minute groundbreaking film focuses on ten members of the Iraqi resistance. Interspersed with stunning footage of the aftermath of car bomb attacks, of frightened soldiers aiming their weapons at crowds of Iraqis, and of burning remains of destroyed military vehicles, the meat of the film is the words of the fighters themselves.

Continued...

2 comments:

Spadoman said...

This is something, no, another one of those things the bought and paid for media don't want people to realize. After all is said and done about why we invaded Iraq, the fact exists that the USA has headed up an occupation force.

I do not like the administration in power in my country, the USA, right now. I don't like their policies, I don't like their agenda, I don't agree with them fiscally or on matters of human rights, (read torture), yet, I would arm and fight to the death any force that invaded my country because they wanted our leader out of office or wanted us to live under a different form of government, and I have proven that I am willing to give my life in Vietnam.

So, it is easy to see that even though Sadaam was an outrageously dishonest dictator, the people of the country unite to fight the oppressors and want them to leave.

Peace to All.

Beth said...

Exactly!!!! I feel like I live in a country filled with idiots - idiots who aren't able to think past the "spin" and apply some critical thinking skills to the facts. I hate the use of the word insurgent as it implies some outside, evil force when it's actually citizens rising up against the occupier/oppressor.