Diagnosing Disaster: Interview with Charles Ferguson and Alex Gibney, director and producer of "No End in Sight" — Feb 9th 2007

By Karina Longworth

Early on in Charles Ferguson's No End in Sight, Donald Rumsfeld announces that the U.S. Army is about to engage in "the first war of the 21st century." There's an unmistakable note of pride in this statement, which dates from the eve of the Iraqi invasion in 2003. And that archival clip is a fitting place for Ferguson to begin his argument, which takes the former Defense Secretary to task for his arrogance, stubbornness, and general refusal to admit mistakes.

Ferguson built the film, his first (the Brookings Institute fellow received guidance from co-producer Alex Gibney of Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room fame) out of 200+ hours of interviews with diplomats, scholars, former Bush administration officials and U.S. soldiers. The filmmaking team also ventured into war-torn central Baghdad, at great personal risk--this is the first film I've seen in which members of a security detail are given on-screen credits in advance of the editor and cinematographer. Ferguson's goal: to meticulously examine the first year of the conflict, pinpointing the key mistakes that continue to hamper the war effort today. The resulting film, though clinical in its treatment of the facts, paints a damning portrait of the Bush Administration's insistence on staying the course. Netscape News sat down with Ferguson and Gibney at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, where No End in Sight premiered to standing ovations and was ultimately awarded a Special Prize by the Festival's Documentary Jury.

Netscape: I personally have a knee-jerk reaction against charges that key members of the Bush Administration are "stupid" or "evil." What's a more reasonable way of explaining why these guys made so many bad decisions?

Charles Ferguson: I think it's much more about blindness, and perhaps also arrogance. Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld are intelligent, accomplished people. But they seem to have been very narrow-minded, unwilling to listen, and also, in a number of cases, dangerously arrogant.

Alex Gibney: I also think this administration has had an obsession with executive power. I mean that in both the literal sense--in terms of the chief executive, the President--but also in terms of other executives, such as Jerry Bremer, in whom they invested a tremendous amount of power. This is something that goes back into deep history. Ever since Nixon's resignation, I think both Rumsfeld and Cheney have been obsessed with that idea. And that's fed into this larger sense of arrogance, of a kind of willful blindness, because they're determined to retain the prerogatives of the executive, the ability to do what they want to do, no matter what anybody else says.

There are a number of title cards in the film, referencing Bush administration officials who wouldn't speak to you on camera. What do you think is behind that shared reticence, given that Rumsfeld, Bush, etc, seem so confident in their deeds and ideas when they speak to the press?

Ferguson: Well, they're confident when they speak to the press. They're not, in general, nearly as enthusiastic or confident about accepting critical questions from the press when they can't be controlled. And that, unfortunately, has been the experience of not just myself in making this film, but of many journalists who have tried to explore what happened.

The film indicts the administration as a whole for giving a persistently distorted picture of events on the ground in Iraq. Why do you think they've chosen that public relations tactic?

Ferguson: Oh, I think it's probably a mixture of things. There's probably some pure, naked, selfish political interest in it; there's also probably shame. L. Paul Bremer is not an entirely stupid man, and he must by now realize that his decisions were disastrous. He must. And that must be a very difficult thing to admit and to bear, and I'm sure that he's conflicted inside.

Why hasn't the mainstream press pushed harder to get to the truth, and why has that duty fallen to documentary filmmakers such as yourselves?

Gibney: I think there are a few general problems with the media, particularly the broadcast media. The networks used to do extraordinary documentaries on these important subjects. But they've gotten caught in two ways. One is, they practice what I call a kind of phony, both-sides journalism, which is not about seeking the truth, it's about pleasing as many people as possible. Tell this side, and then you have to find someone who can tell the opposing view, even if that opposing view is an utter joke. The other thing that the networks have lost is the ability to tell stories... What Charles has done is to tell a story in condensed form, so you can see both the forest and the trees. And that kind of condensed dramatic experience is what people need. We're living in an age when it's very hard to get people's attention: you're texting, you're on the phone, and meanwhile you're watching something else out of the corner of your eye. One way to get people's attention is to tell good stories.

The title of the film is obviously somewhat fatalist. And within the film, there's this idea that a superpower such as the U.S. should have been able to handle this war with greater competence. Do think there's no longer any hope for our foreign policy in Iraq? Has this ordeal permanently damaged our international credibility?

Gibney: I don't think our days as a superpower are over, because we exercise an extraordinary military power that no one else in the world has. But the war, along with the aftermath of Katrina, has shattered the belief of many people as to the core competence of the United States. The question is whether people can separate the actions of this administration from Americans as a whole. In any case, this administration has simply refused to listen, and that's a kind of incompetence that nobody can afford, particularly in a world as complex and dangerous as this. You can't operate without good intelligence, and I mean that in both senses of the term.

Ferguson: I think there's no question that the actions of this administration have damaged not only its own credibility but also the stature and the standing of the United States.

We're about to head into a new presidential election. How will a change in presidential power in the U.S. impact the situation in Iraq?

Ferguson: It would be difficult to conceive of another president--certainly among the publicly announced candidates--who would have the degree of rigidity and blindness about the situation that President Bush has displayed. So I think that the next president it certainly going to be more open-minded. He or she is also going to have a very, very, very difficult job.

Is it too late to turn things around?

Ferguson: It certainly is too late to make Iraq a stable, democratic, healthy nation. It's not too late to avoid the very worst. I would like to see change in the way the war is conducted, and the way future wars are conducted. It might be too late for the war in Iraq, but this is not going to be the last time we use military action.

Tags: alex giney, AlexGiney, charles ferguson, CharlesFerguson, documentary, donald rumsfeld, DonaldRumsfeld, interview, iraq, netscape reports, NetscapeReports, no end in sight, NoEndInSight, president bush, PresidentBush, war

5 Comments