Powerful, intelligent documentary around the huge effort to head off the start of the Iraq war, and the lingering echoes coming down from the protest marches of tens of millions in hundreds of cities of around the world on Feb. 15, 2003, the largest world-wide protest ever.
While the first half of the film shows how that wonderful show of massive human unity failed in the short term to stop that terrible war based on false evidence – a truth which is a terribly sad to re-visit - the 2nd half of the documentary combines anger and optimism in equal parts to show that those efforts made were not in vain in the larger picture.
From showing how the protests in Egypt against the Iraq war laid the groundwork for the successful uprising against the Mubarek government 10 years later, to the recent turn where the UK Parliament refused to give support for U.K. military intervention in Syria –- members of the government openly afraid of repeating the errors of 2003.
As the film points out, the fact that tens of millions of people were right that the war was unnecessary, the fact that Tony Blair is now seen as having been part of one of the biggest military disasters of the last 100 years has made members of government scared of repeating that debacle (hence also Obama's reticence re Syria). But if those millions hadn't raised their voices back then, if no one had seemed to care, then the fear and 2nd guessing that governments are showing now might not have happened, and further needless military adventures may have ensued.
At a moment when it feels like peaceful protest and citizen empowerment movements are all but pointless and impotent, the film is a welcome balm pointing out that the reality is more complex, and giving up in despair is neither wise nor called for.
The fascinating and moving interviews and commentators include John le Carre'. Stephen Hawking, Tom Hayden, Noam Chomsky, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Jesse Jackson, Ken Loach, and most amazingly Colin Powell's Chief of Staff from the Bush years Lawrence Wilkerson, who says he would like to see Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld tried for war crimes - even if it meant he'd be put away too – and would gladly testify against them. An astonishing moment.
