Hollywood Chooses Its Wars By Its President

January 22, 2003

A lot of celebrities lately seem to be jumping on the anti-war bandwagon.   Somehow their celebrity allows them instant credibility.   Like it or not, our fascination with the rich and famous gives them a certain legitimacy that we ordinary mortals don’t enjoy.   That’s not to say that one’s celebrity precludes one from possessing an expertise in politics.   It depends on the individual.   Like the rest of us, they must be judged on the veracity of their statements.

Take George Clooney, for instance.   Upon receiving a recent filmmaking achievement award from the National Board of Reviews, Clooney cruelly joked that “Charlton Heston announced again today that he is suffering from Alzheimer's.”   Upon being offered the chance to recant his tasteless comment Clooney shot back, “I don't care. Charlton Heston is the head of the National Rifle Association. He deserves whatever anyone says about him.”   Oh, really?   Maybe Looney Clooney harbors a certain disdain for constitutional rights or, perhaps, freedom in general.   Probably closer to reality, Clooney reacts as a typical Hollywood leftist, choosing the politically correct side with total disregard for the truth.

Forget the fact that guns help thwart crimes over 2 million times each year.   Forget, also, that Clooney has made a mint in movies featuring guns.   Guess he’s not so selective about his pet causes when someone’s waving a wad of greenbacks in his face.

Now he’s joined the tired throng of self-indulgent blowhards like Martin Sheen (thank God he only plays a president on TV), Barbra Streisand and other famous Hollywood elitists in an anti-war effort.   Despite Clooney’s assertion that President Bush is hell-bent on war, the president has shown amazing restraint in dealing with Iraq.   Bush has gone through the proper channels, building support in Congress and the U.N.   Clooney’s hero, Bill Clinton, sent out the troops and unleashed the missiles in Kosovo with far less provocation.   Remember the bombing of the Chinese embassy?   Whoops.   Clooney and his friends were conspicuously absent from that picket line.  

Our objective in Kosovo was to stop the ethnic cleansing of Muslims.   Meanwhile, Saddam Hussein has conducted his own genocide yet Clooney and his pals seem oblivious.   Not to mention that Saddam has a history of developing weapons of mass destruction, a clear threat to those outside his own borders.

Clooney frets that Bush hasn’t even tried to talk to Saddam.   Talk?   What’s there to talk about?   He either disarms or faces the consequences.   As Secretary of State Colin Powell appropriately points out, the onus is on Iraq to prove they no longer possess these weapons that we already know they have, not for us to find them.   The clock is ticking and Saddam continues to play games with the world.

Still, Clooney compares the Bush administration to the mafia.   “The government itself is running exactly like the Sopranos,” he says.   What he heck does that mean?   The insinuation is that Bush is the bad guy and Saddam is the victim.   How preposterous.

It’s ironic that in his 1997 film The Peacemaker , Clooney played Special Forces Intelligence Officer Thomas Devoe who tracked down nuclear bombs in the hands of terrorists.   Why he can’t see the parallel between Yugoslav terrorists obtaining nukes from Russia and Arab terrorists obtaining nukes from Iraq is beyond me.   The post-Cold War world is a dangerous one.   Sitting on your hands while madmen develop nukes doesn’t seem wise.   Instead of chasing terrorists around Manhattan trying to find a suitcase bomb, it looks like it would be much easier to take care of the problem at the source.   Surely Thomas Devoe would understand that.   Why can’t Clooney?

By the way, Clooney's latest directorial project is “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.”   How apropos.