{"id":49616,"date":"2016-09-18T21:51:47","date_gmt":"2016-09-19T01:51:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=49616"},"modified":"2016-09-18T21:51:47","modified_gmt":"2016-09-19T01:51:47","slug":"oliver-stones-american-history-were-not-under-threat-we-are-the-threat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=49616","title":{"rendered":"Oliver Stone\u2019s American History: \u2018We\u2019re Not under Threat. We Are the Threat\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<div class=\"postThumbnail\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"attachment-single-post-thumbnail wp-post-image alignleft\" title=\"Beating the Drums of a Broader US-NATO Middle East War\" src=\"http:\/\/www.globalresearch.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/127271.jpg\" alt=\"Beating the Drums of a Broader US-NATO Middle East War\" width=\"240\" height=\"160\" \/><\/div>\n<p><em>As he launches his new TV series offering a critical view of US overseas exploits, the film director tells MEE he didn\u2019t always see it that way<\/em><\/p>\n<p>American controversies are Oliver Stone\u2019s forte.<\/p>\n<p>The Hollywood movie director has turned his cameras on the assassination of John F Kennedy, the Vietnam War and the 9\/11 attacks.<\/p>\n<p>But, when researching his television series, The Untold History of the United States, it was American exploits in the Middle East that left him with the\u00a0most lasting impression, he told Middle East Eye on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/OnESozuHxHE?start=40&amp;feature=oembed\" width=\"690\" height=\"400\" frameborder=\"0\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen I studied the untold history, one thing that really hit me hard was the history of our involvement in the Middle East,\u201d Stone said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was a nefarious involvement.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Stone traces Washington\u2019s hand in the region back to the 1930s, but he says it reached a peak when President George HW Bush sent hundreds of thousands of US troops to liberate Kuwait after the Iraqi invasion of 1990.<\/p>\n<p>The Soviet Union had recently collapsed and the region was wide open to a lone superpower, he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe never got out of there. Once we were in, we\u2019re in forever,\u201d Stone said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ve destabilised the entire region, created chaos. And then we blame ISIS for the chaos we created,\u201d he added, referring to the Islamic State (IS) group that now rules swathes of Iraq and Syria.<\/p>\n<p>Stone researched and wrote the series and book with Peter Kuznick, a scholar at the American University who specialises in the US nuclear strikes on Japan that ended the Second World War.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s all about the oil. You remember the bumper sticker: What is our oil doing under their sand?\u201d Kuznick told MEE.<\/p>\n<p>Washington\u2019s hunger for fuel underpins its alliance with Saudi Arabia, the CIA-backed coup against Iranian prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953 and its support for anti-Soviet religious militants in Afghanistan in the 1980s, he said.<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\">\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.middleeasteye.net\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/main_image_article_page\/public\/main-images\/Stone2_edited.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"620\" height=\"445\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Oliver Stone speaks at a press conference to launch his new book on American history (MEE\/James Reinl)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>\u201cWe create these messes, then we have a grand military plan to solve them. And the military solutions just don\u2019t work,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>The views of Stone and Kuznick are not likely to raise eyebrows on the streets of Cairo, Moscow or Paris.<\/p>\n<p>But in the US they are not mainstream.<\/p>\n<p>The way Stone tells it, Americans live in a bubble and are spoon-fed information by a school system, politicians and a media that portrays the US as a beacon of stability and a force for good in the world.<\/p>\n<p>In one famous example, former President Ronald Reagan called the US a \u201cshining city on a hill\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s very comforting to be an American,\u201d Stone said.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>You get the sense that you are safe and have prosperity of material goods, and that you have enemies everywhere \u2013 Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.<\/p>\n<p>You get into this cocoon where you have a big country, two oceans, but that you\u2019re always under threat.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Stone says he understands this well because he lived it himself.<\/p>\n<p>He was raised in New York, the son of a Republican stockbroker, Louis Stone. He was always creative \u2013 he often wrote short plays to entertain his family \u2013 but never questioned how his history teachers puffed up the US, he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI had only gotten a part of the story, which emphasised American exceptionalism, America as a selfless and beneficial country to the world,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>In 1967, Stone volunteered to fight in the US Army and served in Vietnam. He was wounded twice and was honoured with a Bronze Star for heroism and a Purple Heart for his service.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI came back from Vietnam puzzled, completely confused about what was going on there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut I did get a heavy dose of the doublespeak, the militarese talk.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He started asking questions and reading up on \u201cprogressive history\u201d at the same time as he studied filmmaking at New York University under Martin Scorsese and other teachers, he said.<\/p>\n<p>These ideas fed his politically orientated filmmaking in the 1980s.<\/p>\n<p>Salvador (1986) was set in a 1980s war in Central America. Platoon (1986), Stone\u2019s directorial breakthrough movie, dramatised a young soldier\u2019s tour of duty in Vietnam, starring Charlie Sheen.<\/p>\n<p>He continued probing that war in Born on the Fourth of July (1989), starring Tom Cruise. JFK (1991) showed his conspiracy theories about the former president\u2019s killing; movies such as Nixon (1995) and W (2008) tackled subsequent commanders-in-chief.<\/p>\n<p>The release of his movie about NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has been delayed until 2016, he said.<\/p>\n<p>He has also interviewed foreign statesmen who defy Washington \u2013 from the Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro to the ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and Russian President Vladimir Putin.<\/p>\n<p>The Untold History of the United States, a 10-part documentary series and a 750-page book, offers Americans an alternate perspective on US history from the Second World War through the Cold War to the present day.<\/p>\n<p>Stone says he wants to counter the \u201ceducational crime\u201d of misleading American schoolchildren.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAmerican exceptionalism has to be driven out of our curriculums,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re not under threat. We are the threat.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>___<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.globalresearch.ca\/oliver-stones-american-history-were-not-under-threat-we-are-the-threat\/5546363\">http:\/\/www.globalresearch.ca\/oliver-stones-american-history-were-not-under-threat-we-are-the-threat\/5546363<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49616\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}