Remembrance of Things Past: Fair Game and Historical Amnesia

In the Congressional elections of 2010, an American electorate, older and whiter than the voters who propelled Barack Obama to the presidency, returned control of the House of Representatives to the Republican Party.  Obama’s path to the White House was paved by a wave of dissatisfaction with the Bush administration’s handling of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the financial meltdown of 2008.  After two years voters were frustrated that a Democratic president and Congress were unable to reverse the nation’s unemployment crisis.  However, foreign policy concerns seemed to play little role in the Congressional elections.  The Obama administration has essentially followed the Bush plan for combat disengagement in Iraq, while expanding the military commitment to Afghanistan.  Tea Party advocates were critical of budget deficits, yet there was little consideration given to the role played by the Bush foreign adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan in creating these budgetary problems.  Hollywood, however, has released Fair Game, based upon the memoir by former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer Valerie Plame, which reminds viewers, if they can tear themselves away from such escapist fare as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part I, that our current winter of discontent owes much of its origins to the Bush administration’s decision to manipulate intelligence regarding Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi possession of weapons of mass destruction in order to justify regime change in Iraq.

Fair Game introduces Valerie Plame (played by Naomi Watts, who bears a strong physical resemblance to Plame) as a skilled CIA operative committed to waging war on terror.  When the Bush administration suggests that the Iraqis are purchasing enriched uranium from Niger, Plame is willing to recommend that her husband, Joe Wilson (portrayed by Sean Penn, an outspoken critic of the war in Iraq), a former ambassador to Gabon with considerable diplomatic experience in Africa, be dispatched to Niger in order to investigate the allegations.  Although the film makes clear that Wilson was a critic of Saddam Hussein, he found no substance to the claims put forward by the administration, and the ambassador was shocked when President Bush employed the Niger allegations in his 2003 State of the Union address to bolster his case for the invasion of Iraq.  In response to what he considered to be the duplicity of the president, an angry Wilson wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times accusing the Bush administration of manipulating intelligence in order to justify military action against Iraq.  Enraged by Wilson’s challenge to the veracity of the president’s claims, the administration struck back by leaking to reporters that Wilson’s wife, Plame was a CIA agent who arranged the Niger mission for her husband.  Although Deputy Secretary of State Richard Amitage was later identified as the one revealing Plame’s identity to syndicated columnist Robert Novak, a special prosecutor indicted and secured a conviction of Scooter Libby (David Andrews), former Chief of Staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, for perjury and obstructing the investigation into the Plame affair.

Under the direction of Doug Liman, the Plame memoir becomes somewhat of a domestic melodrama, focusing upon how Wilson’s feisty response to the duplicity of the Bush administration and Plame’s ensuing dismissal from the agency after her identity was compromised endangered the couple’s marriage.  Despite the concentration upon the Plame/Wilson relationship, there is plenty of evidence offered by this film to substantiate the case made by Plame and Wilson that the Bush administration played fast and loose with the facts in their rush to war.  Perhaps this will be enough to rouse some viewers from the public amnesia regarding the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

On the other hand, Fair Game seems to exploit the myth of an innocent President George W. Bush manipulated by his Svengali, Dick Cheney.  While there is no direct characterization of Cheney in Fair Game, Scooter Libby is a stand in for the vice president, and as portrayed by David Andrews, Libby displays the arrogance so often associated with Cheney.  Fair Game, however, tends to let President Bush off the hook, and in this regard the film is similar to director Oliver Stone’s W. (2008).  In this cinematic biography, Stone presents Bush (Josh Brolin) as well meaning but simply in over his head as president, thus making it possible for Vice President Cheney (Richard Dreyfuss) to manipulate his somewhat naive junior partner.  The active role played by Cheney in defending the Bush record during the first two years of the Obama presidency, of course, lends credence to this interpretation.

Yet, the publication of Bush’s memoir Decision Points suggests that always casting Cheney as the evil emperor may contribute to our historical amnesia regarding the Bush foreign policy.  In his memoir and interviews to promote the book, Bush makes it clear that he continues to have little gift for introspection.  He insists on defending the invasion of Iraq and justifies the use of torture such as water boarding.  As for the Plame/Wilson affair, Bush writes that the statement on Niger and enriched uranium was supported by British intelligence estimates and constituted only one line in a lengthy State of the Union address.  The president makes no apologies to Plame or Wilson, concentrating instead upon explaining his decision to commute Libby’s sentence which he considered to be too harsh on the former Bush White House operative.

Accordingly, Fair Game brings us back, as should publication of Decision Points, to how we got into this mess in the first place.  The Obama administration should not be immune from criticism and must accept blame for escalating the conflict in Afghanistan and not fighting hard enough for progressive principles such as single payer national health care program.  But we must not forget that it was the Bush tax cuts and military interventions along with regime change in Iraq which put us on the road to our current foreign policy and economic malaise.  Tea Party enthusiasts who have conveniently forgotten the misdeeds of George W. Bush as president are taking credit for returning the Republican Party to power in the House.  Perhaps they should shell out a few dollars from their anticipated tax cuts to purchase a ticket to Fair Game and revisit the policies of the recent past which brought such devastation to America and the world.