War is Business

The 2005 film Lord of War, starring Nicholas Cage in his best-ever performance, is essential viewing for anyone interested in a humorous and satirical depiction of the absurdity and futility of war.

It is not a violent film, even though its subject is war, and is immensely entertaining. The problem is that the events depicted really happened.

The film’s script is based on the activities of an arms dealer who rose from poverty to become extremely rich through arms dealing in war zones during the 80s and 90s. This “era of peace” in the West was anything but peaceful elsewhere on the planet.

For many years now, TV shows and movies have been de-sensitising and romanticising viewers to violence, shootings, and war, making the actors involved in these activities appear “good” and “heroic”. Nothing is further from the truth. One thing however that Lord of War doesn’t do, thankfully, is to romanticise war. It makes it clear that war is about business, greed, looting, and power over others.

Lord of War shows war through the eyes of a businessman. A second film, the 2018 anti-war film A Private War, shows war as seen through the eyes of a war journalist, even if the journalist in question, Marie Colvin, meets her death covering the Syrian conflict in 2012. A third film, the 2009 film Waltz With Bashir views war through the eyes of a soldier. It is based on the true story of Ari Folman, an Israeli soldier, who realises he was so traumatised by his part in the 1982 conflict in Lebanon that he could no longer remember it. It traces his path to recovery of those memories. 

No further war films need viewing. These three films show war exactly how it really is: devastated families and communities, loss and poverty, displacement, and unnecessary hardship, while the people who created the wars watch the killing from a safe distance from their comfortable offices and homes with a glass of wine in their hands.

For those who persist in their desire to watch humans shooting guns, killing fellow humans, dressing up in military uniforms and all the vast ‘sexy’ war propaganda on TV and in films, hundreds of films are available to assist in the lowering of one’s frequency.

War is Business!

It should always be remembered that the five nations that are the biggest suppliers of weapons on Earth are also the five members of the United Nations Security Council tasked with overseeing peace on Earth. Slim chance of any peace then.

The final scenes of Lord of War show the arms dealer being released from prosecution and legal custody, because Western Governments and their militaries need his services.

This might sound far-fetched but, incredibly, USA’s President Biden just completed a prisoner swap with Russia. Who did he swap a high-value Russian prisoner for? An arms dealer of course. In the twenty years since the events depicted in the Lord of War occurred, nothing has changed. War is business.

9 January 2023