Strange But True: The Ishtar and Iraq Coincidences

Just over twenty years ago - while George Bush was up to his ears in dodgy stock deals over at Harken - Elaine May, Warren Beatty, and Dustin Hoffman went off to the desert to make a movie called Ishtar.

Little did they realize that they were embarking on an eerie foreshadowing of what would occur under President Bush.

In fact, the comparisons between Ishtar and The War in Iraq, rank up there right alongside the bizarre similarities between Lincoln and Kennedy's deaths and the strange parallels between Scooter Libby and Lil' Kim .

The curious coincidences:

• Like George Bush, the filmmaker and the stars were at the height of their popularity going in.

• Both had a hot female sidekick whose name is kind of hard to spell. George Bush had Condoleezza Rice, Warren Beatty had Isabelle Adjani.

• Both were very expensive productions involving shooting in the sand.

• Both were critical disasters with the media and both were flops with the public.

• Ishtar lost 42 million dollars. With the War in Iraq, America has lost roughly 500 billion dollars, or more simply put, half a trillion dollars.

• Despite initial high hopes and great enthusiasm at the outset, both have just tiny cult followings today. The War in Iraq has Bill Kristol; Ishtar has, um, me. (Because to be fair, it's actually a pretty great movie. If it's ever released on DVD you'll see what I mean. Vincent Canby even put it amongst his best films that year.)

• In the end, all the filmmakers wanted was to make a nice, little road picture, like those old ones with Bing Crosby and Bob Hope.

• All Bush wanted was to have a nice, little war, like those old ones with James Baker and Norman Schwarzkopf.

• Warren Beatty's mega-superstar-career pretty much died with Ishtar, but of course that's just a figure of speech. Meanwhile, 80,000 American soldiers, coalition soldiers, and Iraqi men, women and children have quite literally died in the course of this war.

• For a comeback, Dustin Hoffman starred Rain Man, ultimately winning an Oscar for his famous depiction of Raymond, a classic idiot savant.

As for George Bush, well, we're still waiting for the savant part.

Comments

[Kajur]

".... For a comeback, Dustin Hoffman starred Rain Man, ultimately winning an Oscar for his famous depiction of Raymond, a classic idiot savant.
As for George Bush, well, we're still waiting for the savant part"

For the "savant" part you can wait forever, for the "idiot", you don't have to wait at all.

[NewsNag]

It's more like 800,000 than 80,000 dead in Bush's war....and counting. Keep up.

[fightorleave2]

I too question the author's citation of 80,000 as the number of dead in Iraq. Sounds low to me, but what do we know.

[blackspeak]

"As for George Bush, well, we're still waiting for the savant part."

I think you meant to say, "we're still waiting for the Tom Cruise part." We already have the idiot savant (Raymond), its George Bush.

[3fingerbrown]

Another amazing similarity: The word-of-mouth for both productions was terrible.

[yellowdogSC]

Eerie!

Look, goosebumps!

[RogueCowboy]

Size of the Al Qaeda Terrorist Force in Iraq that can not be contained with 200,000 Iraqi Security Forces that can operate with minimal Allied Support(50,000 US Troops, 5,000 Allied Troops:

The State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), which arguably has the best track record for producing accurate intelligence assessments, last year estimated that AQI's membership was in a range of "more than 1,000." When compared with the military's estimate for the total size of the insurgency—between 20,000 and 30,000 full-time fighters—this figure puts AQI forces at around 5 percent.
When turning to the question of manpower, military officials told the New York Times in August that of the roughly 24,500 prisoners in U.S. detention facilities in Iraq (nearly all of whom are Sunni), just 1,800—about 7 percent—claim allegiance to al-Qaeda in Iraq. Moreover, the composition of inmates does not support the assumption that large numbers of foreign terrorists, long believed to be the leaders and most hard-core elements of AQI, are operating inside Iraq. In August, American forces held in custody 280 foreign nationals—slightly more than 1 percent of total inmates.

What's the real number of Al Qaeda in Iraq still on the "BATTLEFIELD"? Apparently it is less than 2,000 yet we need 170,000 troops and the help of 200,000 Iraqi Security Forces for another year to keep them at bay until next fall. Then over 50,000 US troops and over 350,000 Iraqi Security Forces will be needed for the foreseeable future.
Give me a break!

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2007/0710.tilghman.html

[fightorleave2]

Imagine if the news media understood the concept of using facts to make a point. Well done, rogue cowboy.

[BillW]

Telling the truth can be dangerous business

Honest and popular don't go hand in hand.

If you admit that you play the accordion,

No one will hire you in a rock 'n' roll band.

But we can sing out hearts out

And if we're lucky, then no neighbors complain

Because life is the way we audition for God

Let us pray that we all get the job

[TheDoomed]

You were right about the women with hard to spell names. It's Isabelle Adjani, not Idjani.

[Toby Barlow - Huffpost Blogger]

Oy, you're right. Wish I could blame Wikipedia but it's my own damn fault.

[CLN]

Goodness. I thought I was the only person in the entire universe that liked Ishtar. I do not share the same enthusiasm for the Iraq war. Though in another eerie similarity, many Americans could explain their passive acceptance of the war by using the same line Warren Beatty used to explain his purchase of a blind camel: "I didn't buy it. They sold it to me."

[Podewumun]

Funny your moniker - CLN - that's what I had to do to my monitor when you made me spit a mouthful of VT on it!
Thanks for a good laugh!!!!!!!!!!!!

[FearlessFreep]

The musical numbers were so bad they were great!

"How big is the universe? How big am I?"

[twofish]

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy had something to say about that:

"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space."

So did Monty Python, in a song that somehow seems also to relate to the Iraq fiasco:

"The Universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whizz
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light you know,
12 million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is.
So remember when you're feeling very small and insecure
How amazingly unlikely is your birth
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space
Because there's bugger all down here on Earth."