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The new Netflix movie War Machine is either terrible or terrific, depending on how you look at it. For Americans who know little about the war in Afghanistan and want to learn more, this is a terrible place to start. It is a ruthless satire of events during a particularly contentious segment of the nation’s longest war, and those who are unfamiliar with that period could far too easily mistake caricature for accuracy. But for those who know enough to tell the difference, the film is at different points funny, poignant, overblown — and gut-wrenchingly accurate when depicting the futility of war.
The movie is a fictionalized account of the war in Afghanistan featuring Brad Pitt as Gen. Glen McMahon, nicknamed “the Glenimal” — a thinly disguised version of Gen. Stanley McChrystal. McChrystal assumed command of the war in June 2009, and was fired one year later after Rolling Stone published an unflattering account of his inner circle and their blatant disrespect for civilian leaders in the White House. The picture is loosely based on that article and the subsequent book by the same author.
War Machine will both intrigue and outrage military audiences, especially those who have served in the Afghan Hindu Kush. Some viewers — including your authors — personally know some of the key characters from real life, making the movie even more interesting to watch. (And one of us served as the senior U.S. commander there, though several years before McChrystal). Reviews of the film have been generally (though not uniformly) positive, because it paints a striking picture of the inherent dilemmas and ironies of waging our modern wars. Here’s our take.
What the Movie Gets Wrong
What the Movie Gets Right
There are two types of generals in the American military. There are those who believe they can win in the face of all evidence to the contrary, and there are those who know they can’t. Unfortunately for the world, it’s the believers who climb to the top of the ladder.
McMahon never gives off even the slightest whiff of self-doubt or an iota of serious introspection — a problem we discuss further below.
The Big Takeaway
Tilda Swinton brilliantly plays a German parliamentarian who politely but relentlessly grills McMahon about his war-winning strategy during a briefing in Berlin. She is remorseless in trying to pin him down about the impact of his limitless hubris colliding with the gritty reality of a war that might not be winnable. Her best lines:
This [war] is the great moment of your life … it’s understandable to me that you should therefore have a fetish for completion … It is my job, however, to ensure your personal ambitions are not entirely delusional, and do not carry with them an unacceptable cost for everybody else.
This scene in many ways highlights the central question of the movie: What do we expect of our military commanders at war? Are we hiring them for their indomitable will to prevail over all obstacles — a will that must ineluctably be based on their powerful self-confidence and boundless optimism? Or do we want commanders who can look dispassionately at a military problem, taking in the political and cultural contexts, weigh the costs in time and casualties, and when appropriate, tell civilian leaders that something cannot or should not be done?
The answer, of course, is both. In one early scene, a British colonel on McMahon’s staff boldly gives his stark appraisal of what should be done in Helmand province. After telling his new boss that after five years, no hearts and minds have been won and none are likely to be, he bluntly advises: “This whole province constitutes just four percent of the population. It’s strategically meaningless. I’d cut Helmand loose, sir.”
Such candor and ruthless strategic thinking is even more important for generals than for colonels — and can be much tougher to share with senior civilian leaders who may have expansive goals and unrealistic timelines. Commanders are obligated to be forthright about their prospects to succeed with the time and resources they are given, without the bias of optimism. Yet this obligation directly clashes directly with their ingrained breeding to be can-do leaders who aggressively charge into adversity. By definition, generals have been rewarded throughout their careers for succeeding at tough and even seemingly-impossible tasks. At the four-star level, the complete self-confidence that comes from three or four decades of typically unbroken success is unlikely to suddenly transform into caution or a propensity to question the mission, no matter how impossible it may appear.
The questions raised by War Machine transcend the often-farcical nature of the film. As good satire, it mocks absurdity and skewers the foolhardy while suggesting deeper truths. It should be “must-see TV” for our current generals and all those who aspire to wear stars, even if it pops blood pressure cuffs with its wickedly snarky jabs. And as the nation once again evaluates the next steps in the never-ending war in Afghanistan, watching War Machine might also bring a bracing dose of strategic reality for everyone wrestling with these truly tough issues of war and peace.
Lt. Gen. David W. Barno, USA (Ret.) is a Distinguished Practitioner in Residence, and Dr. Nora Bensahel is a Distinguished Scholar in Residence, at the School of International Service at American University. Both also serve as Nonresident Senior Fellows at the Atlantic Council. Their column appears in War on the Rocks every third Tuesday. To sign up for Barno and Bensahel’s Strategic Outpost newsletter, where you can track their articles as well as their public events, click here.