Merry mayhem: Those photos of kids, dead and maimed, being carted from the U.S. mess tent in Mosul, made me think of the 1954 Bing Crosby film White Christmas. It opens with U.S. soldiers in Italy on Christmas Eve, 1944. They are also off-duty, at a “show” honouring their departing general, affectionately called The Old Man.

But what a different script. The U.S. went to war in Europe in the Second World War reluctantly, which is easier to appreciate now, in the light of their rush to war in Iraq. They hesitated for more than two years after war broke out, until Pearl Harbour when their reasons and goals were clear. They were welcomed in Britain, where they were based, and in the countries they helped liberate, which had all previously been invaded and occupied by a brutal foreign army. In Iraq, by contrast, the U.S. forced a war that no one was clamouring for, and fabricated claims to justify it. They are the sole significant occupier, no matter how you assess their motives.

The innocent quality of earlier U.S. interventions was also depicted in the “road” movies of the 1950s, with Bing Crosby and Bob Hope as American innocents abroad — in Mark Twain’s phrase. They had no ulterior motives, no ordnance, they were embraced everywhere. I don’t mean to whitewash the imperial record in the U.S. past — the deliberate destruction of native peoples, centuries of intervention in Latin America. But there still seems to me a difference between one Christmas occupation and the other. Those kids in Mosul have an innocence, too. Many are poor and from the south, they joined up mainly to get a college education. Then they find themselves shuddering in Eye-rack, wondering what they are doing there. They have the air of victims, not free spirits roaming the globe.

When the bombs start falling in the ’54 flick, it’s after the “show”; the GIs have moved out to battle the enemy. It’s classic war. It contrasts with Mosul, described in reports as a “massacre” and an “inside job,” though the mess tent probably counts as a military target. But nothing about the Iraq war is classic. Most of it has happened since the war was declared over.

White Christmas ends “stateside,” postwar, the mission truly accomplished. The Old Man is having a rough time with an inn he bought in Vermont, but business improves when snow starts falling and his former soldiers flock in as guests (in uniform) singing, “We’ll follow the Old Man wherever he wants to go.” It’s a stirring, noble moment, broadly speaking, but as usual with metaphors, everything depends on how you understand it. Just who is the Old Man now, and where does he want to go?

Redacted to nothing: A recent photo in The Globe and Mail showed two pages from the report of the public inquiry into the Maher Arar miscarriage of justice, “redacted” by Liberal government officials, at the request of CSIS, to show dozens of lines blacked out and only a few that were readable. Ottawa Citizen reporter Juliet O’Neill recently got to see, at long last, the application the RCMP used to gain a warrant to raid and ransack her home for her coverage of the same matter. It was also redacted with a heavy black instrument but the judge on the case did insist on revealing the address of an RCMP building that has a sign in front of it and a few other trivial or known details that the Mounties tried to keep the lid on.

For this minimal victory, Juliet O’Neill credits her employer, CanWest Global, for the gobs of money and persistence required. It’s a bit ironic, she notes, since many people see CanWest as part of the problem rather than the solution. I think it’s more a case of even a stopped clock being right twice a day, but maybe that’s the humbug in the air. Perhaps the point is: As long as huge institutions like governments, police agencies and media giants find themselves in conflict and competition, at least a bit of public good might follow. Personally, I’m way less patient with them than I am with, say, student protesters who block speakers whose views they dispute. I think the students are wrong and should have the reasons why explained to them, but the grownups should just cut it out.

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Rick Salutin

Rick Salutin is a Canadian novelist, playwright and critic. He is a strong advocate of left wing causes and writes a regular column in the Toronto Star.