No End in Sight

Charles Ferguson's new documentary No End in Sight presents a coherent explanation for the chaotic situation in Iraq. Ferguson explores how bureaucratic incompetence, managerial inexperience, naive idealism, and short-sighted decision making have turned Iraq into a bloody, vicious war zone. With an estimated 600, 000 Iraqi citizens dead, the future of the Iraq conflict looks grim, and Ferguson places the blame on a relatively small number of high ranking members of the Bush administration who theorized a strategy to maintain order in Iraq without reference to any sense of practical detail. The most notable mistakes were the dismissal of the Iraqi army, taking away the jobs of 500, 000 skilled military personnel and replacing them with rhetoric, the disbanding of the government, taking away another 50, 000 jobs from people well versed in the intricate details of governing the Iraqi people (replacing them with recently graduated students with no knowledge of Arabic), and the fact that the American Army permitted the citizen's of Baghdad to loot the city from top to bottom, leaving the American occupational bureaucracy with little to no infrastructure to begin the extremely complicated business of administering a foreign country. Ferguson's interview's skillfully illustrate the disastrous consequences of acting before planning, of making split-second decisions affecting millions of lives without forethought. It's as if a small proportion of the Bush Administration decided to invade a country over breakfast, made up their plan for the invasion over lunch, stopped for a quick nap, and then executed their plan over dinner. The future for Iraq looks interminably grim, and, according to Ferguson’s presentation, it seems as if stability is something generations of innocent Iraqis will never have the pleasure of experiencing.