Film review
GOING UPRIVER
A lot of people probably will dismiss the new documentary "Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry" as pro-Kerry propaganda and won't see it.
It will be their loss.
"Going Upriver" is no more pro-Kerry than "Pumping Iron," the 1977 documentary also directed by George Butler, is pro-Arnold Schwarzenegger. In both movies, Butler presents his subjects and leaves it to us to decide what to make of them. (That said, the serious, studious, duty- and service-minded younger Kerry shown in "Going Upriver" is in stark contrast to the arrogant, duplicitous, dictator-praising, pot-smoking, frolicking-with-bimbos younger Schwarzenegger shown in "Pumping Iron.")
More than it is about John Kerry, "Going Upriver" is about the Vietnam War and how things haven't changed much since the Vietnam War, how history repeats itself. While Butler draws no overt comparisons of the quagmire in Vietnam and the current quagmire in Iraq, it's difficult, as a thinking audience member, not to draw the comparisons.
In "Going Upriver," for instance, a younger Kerry, on Dick Cavett's television talk show and in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, relates how young American men in Vietnam continued to die not because the war was accomplishing anything, but because President Richard Nixon did not want to be the first U.S. president to go down in history as having lost a war. Saving face was more important to the Nixon regime than were the thousands of American lives -- and the hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese lives -- that were being lost in Vietnam .
If you think that Vietnam is just ancient history, let's revisit what "President" George W. Bush said just Thursday night, during the first 2004 presidential debate:
First of all, what my opponent wants you to forget is that he voted to authorize the use of force. And now says it's the wrong war at the wrong time at the wrong place.
I don't see how you can lead this country to succeed in Iraq if you say wrong war, wrong time, wrong place. What message does that send our troops? What messages does that send our allies? What message does that send the Iraqis?
No, the way to win this is to be steadfast and resolved and to follow through on the plan that I just outlined.
Note that Bush's argument -- which he thought was so fucking clever that he repeated the phrase "the wrong war at the wrong time at the wrong place" or a close variation of it throughout the rest of the debate -- is not whether or not the Iraq war is the wrong war at the wrong time at the wrong place. His argument is that to acknowledge that the Iraq war is the wrong war at the wrong time at the wrong place would be a public-relations problem for him and his regime.
So fuck the truth. Fuck the troops. Fuck the Iraqis, fuck the entire fucking world. This is all about saving face for the Bush regime. Let's all just pretend that the Bush regime's unprovoked, illegal, immoral, imperialistic March 2003 invasion of Iraq was not a colossal fucking mistake, because the United States of America and its leaders are incapable of making mistakes.
To answer Bush's rhetorical question of what message it would send to acknowledge that his regime's war in Iraq is the wrong war at the wrong time at the wrong place, I imagine that many, if not most, of our troops, our allies, the Iraqis and the world would love it if the the Bush regime would actually fucking admit its many, many mistakes. (Hell, even just one mistake!)
Because only after a mistake is acknowledged can it be fixed.
We Americans need to acknowledge our mistake of having allowed the Bush regime to take over the White House without having been elected, and we can acknowledge that mistake on Nov. 2 by voting the lying, thieving, murderous Bush regime out of Washington. Our troops, our allies, the Iraqis and the rest of the world would be delighted to hear that message from the American people, that we acknowledge our mistake and that with legitimately elected President John Kerry we intend to fix what the Bush regime shamelessly, needlessly, criminally broke.
I won't rehash "Going Upriver" because it contains so many gems that to describe them all would ruin the surprise. You need to see it, and if you want to read more about it before you go see it, you can visit its Web site.
I will remark that "Going Upriver" thoroughly discredits so-called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ringleader John O'Neill -- who is a Vietnam veteran but who never served with Kerry -- for what he is: A deer-caught-in-the-headlights right-wing nutjob who was recruited by the Nixon regime to try to discredit Kerry.
Just as Butler does not tell us, but rather shows us what a true American hero Kerry is, Butler does not tell us, but shows us what a raging assbite O'Neill is. Television clips and film footage don't lie.
I had thought that "Going Upriver" would simply rehash images that I'd already scene, but the film shows mostly film and television clips and pictures that I'd never seen before (and made me wonder why I hadn't) and it fleshed out what I already knew about John Kerry.
Perhaps the most poignant part of "Going Upriver" is the film footage of Vietnam veterans tossing their medals over a fence in a symbolic act, an act to show that they believed that in Vietnam they fought for nothing, that their comrades were killed and were still being killed for nothing, and thus their medals meant nothing to them.
I've read about the medal-tossing, but no written account of it that I've read does it any justice; one has to watch the film footage to gain a real understanding of what happened. Rather than a spiteful, anti-American hatefest, as the Bush-lovin' AmeriNazis would have us believe it was, the medal-tossing was a cathartic expression of deep sorrow over young lives lost for nothing except for the pride of stupid white men and resentment that the federal government run by said stupid white men had lied about the war in Vietnam, just as the Bush regime has been lying about its war in Iraq. (That anyone should criticize the veterans for doing whatever the fuck they please with their own damned medals pisses me off, especially the fact that most of the critics of the medal-throwers would never put their own precious, hypocritical, chickenhawk asses in the way of a bullet.)
While I have long known that John Kerry, whom I have seen speak twice here in Northern California and whose hand I shook at one of those events, is a good man who will be a great president, I walked away from "Going Upriver" filled with a whole new appreciation for what Kerry has fought for and for what he still fights, and an unexpected appreciation of how vitally important the Vietnam War remains to this day, a deep understanding that it's not ancient history.
If Bush hadn't pussed out of Vietnam, if he had gone like Kerry went (Kerry volunteered to go) and had witnessed what Kerry witnessed, there is no way that he could so blithely suggest during Thursday's presidential debate that saving face for his regime is more important than saving Americans', Iraqis' and others' lives.
"Going Upriver" demonstrates that like the Vietnam War was, the Second Bush War in Iraq is the wrong war at the wrong time at the wrong place -- and that John Kerry, like he was during the anti-Vietnam War movement, is the right man at the right time at the right place.
My grade: A
9:15:26 PM 
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