Product Details

• Actors: Norman Solomon, Sean Penn
• Directors: Loretta Alper, Jeremy Earp
• Format: Color, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
• Language: English
• Region: All Regions
• Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: The Disinformation Company
• DVD Release Date: March 25, 2008
• Run Time: 72 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00118SUHU
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #58,343 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Review

Like many other documentaries about the war in Iraq and the Bush administration's foreign policy, "War Made Easy" states its case with persuasive details. There's just so much evidence to support the assertion that several wars have been sold to us like a consumer product we need to survive, and that the American public and more important, the shockingly compliant free press has bought the sales pitch hook, line and sinker.

Produced by the Media Education Foundation; narrated by Sean Penn (which automatically invites derision from the political right); and assembled from a telling variety of news clips, sound bites and archival war footage, "War Made Easy" is based on the 2005 book by political and media critic Norman Solomon, and deliberately limits its focus to Solomon as its only interview subject.

Armed with decades of documentary evidence, Solomon asserts that, especially since World War II, U.S. presidents have repeatedly sold avoidable wars based on fallacious arguments and deceptive manipulation of public support.

For much of the citizenry, Solomon, Penn and the filmmakers are preaching to the choir. But even the most ardent supporters of President Bush's policies would find it difficult to refute Solomon's thesis, which touches on the historical nature of propaganda, bombing raids approved under the pretense of political "altruism" and the manipulation of news media through omitted facts and outright lies designed to encourage pro-war sentiment while anti-war voices (the film mentions CNN's Peter Arnett and MSNBC's Phil Donahue) are summarily silenced.

It doesn't end there, and Bush is presented as merely the latest practitioner of pro-war manipulation. From the squelching of "Vietnam Syndrome" (the notion that Vietnam left a cynical American public resistant to future declarations of war) to the glaring repetition of slogans designed to lull the public into pro-war submission, "War Made Easy" combines historical perspective with contemporary relevance, focusing on recent events as further evidence that deceptive strategies to justify war are nothing new, but rather an ongoing pattern of calculated misdirection that has proved tragically effective. --Jeff Shannon, The Seattle Times

Product Description

Narrated by Sean Penn and based on the work of media critic and best-selling author Norman Solomon, who traveled with Penn to Baghdad just before the war to call attention to the dangers of a U.S. invasion, WAR MADE EASY reaches into the Orwellian memory hole to expose 50 years of government spin and media collusion that has dragged our country into one war after another from Vietnam to Iraq. With remarkable archival footage of official distortion and exaggeration from LBJ to George W. Bush, the documentary exposes how presidential administrations of both parties have relied on a combination of deception and media complicity to sell one war after another to the American people.

Giving special attention to parallels between Vietnam and Iraq, WAR MADE EASY sets government spin and media collusion from the present alongside virtually identical patterns from the past, guided by Solomon s meticulous research and tough-minded analysis. Rare footage of political leaders and journalists from the past includes Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and news correspondents Walter Cronkite and Morley Safer. According to Solomon, whose work has been praised by The Los Angeles Times as brutally persuasive, the positive attention the film has received may indicate a new willingness to counter years of pro-war media spin and government deception. These deep patterns of ongoing perception management must be demystified and decoded if we're going to move beyond the horrors of perpetual war, he said. The way War Made Easy is being embraced could be an important step in that direction.

An Official Selection of 2007 s International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam and the 2007 Montreal and Vancouver International Film Festivals, WAR MADE EASY, directed by Loretta Alper and Jeremy Earp, is an invaluable introduction to war propaganda and public relations that transcends partisan politics, and raises serious questions about the role of journalism and political communication in our society.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars watch this movie., March 23, 2008

By	j. sistin "la jeffe" (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews

Excellent documentary that talks about the way the media and the American government heave misled the American people into the Vietnam and Iraq wars and then actively rewrite history to cover the facts.

How many times have we heard, "no one could have known Iraq didn't have WMDs" or "if i knew then what i know now." The fact is, we did know the chances were extremely low, and the protesters before the war began numbered in the millions. The media, rather than investigating and out of fear of being "unpatriotic" fell in lockstep with the administration.
Times right now are scary, and this movie shows how the freedoms we take for granted are being grievously abused. Watch this movie to be reminded of how the media and the government should work in relation to one another.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great examination of factors (mis)leading us into war, February 2, 2008

By	Mike Hersh (Maryland) - See all my reviews

Norman Solomon is a thoughtful scholar and his powerful analysis makes clear the many factors which let government officials (mis)lead us into war. A must see! Also read the book: War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars ...affords us little by way of fresh or vital information..., April 5, 2008

By	Wade R. Goria "Historian" (Brooklyn, NY USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Norman Solomon's War Made Easy affords us very little by way of fresh or vital information needed to grasp why major corporate networks adopt views that demonize countries and consistently advance the cause of war. The obvious reason, one neglected or evaded by Solomon is profit. In the major media, journalism has been nearly completely supplanted by commercialism. Even more objective non-commercial stations such as PBS and NPR remain financially tied to corporate underwriters that epitomize the military industrial complex such as United Technologies, Boeing and General Electric. Rupert Murdoch's Fox, Time-Warner's a CNN (no longer influenced by a more progressive-oriented Ted Turner), CBS's Viacom presided over by the staunch neo-conservative and close ally of President Bush- Sumner Redstone, Disney's ABC and General Electric's NBC, can no longer be categorized as news gathering organizations that employ bona fide journalists.

Indeed, so-called reporters and news analysts working for corporate conglomerates function today primarily as agents who obediently disseminate an agenda that routinely subordinates corporate profit to justice, truth, fairness, and common decency. Commercial agents of this variety - the use of the term journalists in this regard is outmoded and irrelevant - understand where their bread is buttered, especially while summary eradication from television or radio airwaves constitutes the price such corporate agents pay for an effort to perform credible research, engage in independent analysis and offer in the process worthy sources on behalf of the views they readily espouse on behalf of the corporations that control them.

To his credit, Solomon does offer reference to Phil Donahue who was dismissed by NBC in 2003 as a consequence to his opposition to America's invasion of Iraq. However, in his treatment of Donahue, we are afforded such a paucity of information relating to the details of his case that the viewer is left with the erroneous impression that the media in such instances remains myopic rather than willful, agenda-driven and profit-minded.

Much more sophisticated and painstakingly researched films such as: Robert Greenwald's Outfoxed and Iraq for Sale: the War Profiteers, Eugene Jarecki's Why We Fight, Michael Moore's: Bowling for Columbine or Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abott and Joel Bakkan's The Corporation afford us far more knowledge and insight about the manner in which the military industrial complex, the US government and the commercially driven mass media exist as a well-orchestrated monolith that promotes a policy of war for profit with singular determination and skill. Indeed, this constitutes one of the most disturbing fundamental realities afflicting America and the world today, one that Solomon fully neglects to examine.

Why should this have been so? Does Solomon deem the general public unfit or incapable of processing the fairly straightforward profit-minded nature of the commercially-driven mass media? NBC is owned by General Electric, a major actor in the military industrial complex and the company has reaped vast profits from the war in Iraq. The entertainment giant Viacom owning CBS under Redstone can no longer rightly claim to serve as news gathering organization. Time-Warner, which owns CNN, now appears to be nearly as agenda-driven and right-wing as Fox demonstrating commitment in every possible way to upholding the Bush foreign policy and corporate agenda. Facts such as these, so worthy of concerted investigation are strangely if not perversely omitted by Solomon. Much of the world deems Bush policies to be pernicious and the commercial mass media serves as accomplices in this regard. Gore Vidal's small, but important book: Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace presents characteristically informed and provocative ideas from which Solomon may have profited. Yet in his treatment of the FCC, Solomon also evades pertinent details relating to the shameful conduct of that agency in the present day skirting the issue that FCC has fully betrayed its original mission. The ranks of the FCC are filled with unfit Bush political appointees and its actions and policies - much as we witnessed during Hurricane Katrina - display utter contempt for the American commonweal. Today, as never before, the FCC can be completely relied upon to advance the cause of media consolidation, corporate greed, governmental power-politics and unfathomable death and destruction worldwide. In the meantime, Fox, CNN and GE's NBC routinely employ stunningly effective and highly rational forms of manipulation of the public thereby effectively generating mass support for a profit-based war agenda emanating from Washington policymakers.

Solomon's singular failure to elucidate these salient and ghastly realities is rendered all the more exasperating by his incessant and quite irritating on and off appearances as a talking head throughout the film. Sean Penn's strong and welcomed narrative voice is too often interrupted by Solomon. For their part, Loretta's Alper and Jeremy Earp's direction evince artfulness. Fine footage of Oregon Senator Wayne Morse's denunciation of America's involvement in Vietnam and Martin Luther King's ominously prophetic discourse on the same subject remind us how remarkably prescient these remarkable leaders were in voicing strong opposition to a war that had gained during its early phase, widespread support from the commercial mass media and the public.

Alas, powerful excerpts of speeches depicting Morse and King's courageous stands fail to compensate for Solomon's vapid script. On the whole, War Made Easy reveals Solomon's predisposition to deny others, far more knowledgeable than he, the opportunity to offer detail, authenticity and insight into the symbiotic relationship existing today between war-profiteering and mass media.

The topic Solomon has chosen to portray in his film in so disappointing a fashion is simply too disturbing and powerful in its vast implications to be left in the hands of someone manifestly unable or unwilling to address it with requisite, erudition, perspicacity, or candor.