Pat Dollard | Young Americans

An interview from a while back in Mongrel Magazine ( An Irish hipster magazine, trying to be like a cross between GQ and Rolling Stone. It’s apparently big over there. The interview and answers are highly edited, often in favor of more sensational soundbites )
We are living in the age of treason
A lively chat with Pat Dollard

Interview Mark O’Connell
Illustration Stephen Ledwidge

Pat Dollard has had an interesting career trajectory. A former Hollywood agent and producer, he represented Steven Soderbergh from the time of Sex, Lies and Videotape until 2004, and produced Paul Schrader’s Auto Focus. In 2004, he left Hollywood behind to go to Iraq and film the lives of soldiers stationed there. Young Americans - the resultant series of documentary films - is more or less bare-faced propaganda. Dollard is now an extremely vocal critic of his former industry’s prevalent anti-war liberalism. He has called George Clooney a “pompous jackass”.

Journalists talked about being ‘embedded’ back in 2003 when the war started, but it was mostly just self-aggrandising nonsense. You seem pretty much in there with the troops.

…I left my comfortable fuckin dickhead life in a mansion in Beverly Hills because I was so tired of hearing ninety percent of the coverage being anti-war. I was going to learn the truth… now I’ve lived through the war… I was never in large camps in the rear, I never spent one night in a hotel in Iraq. I was always in the shithole frontline OPs. I don’t want people saying that ‘even though he was there, he didn’t have a real look at the nitty gritty’. Bullshit. I have a fucking hole in my leg. I know all about horror. Nobody has to fucking lecture me about that.

The footage shot by insurgents of them launching missiles at camps that you use in your films - did you actually grab that footage yourself from raided houses?

Yes. It’s eerie going out and getting shot at and seeing it from the other side’s own viewpoint. You’re watching these guys laying these IEDs, and knowing that those devices are the ones that have killed your friends and almost killed you. It’s a chilling image to see.

So your typical NBC or Fox reporters over in Iraq, what do they do?

They’ll stay in a hotel in Baghdad and do a report from the roof, or they’ll stay in one of the larger more plush camps and do a report from there. Some of them do go out there and from time to time go on patrols and raids. But they won’t live the life of a soldier, which is what I did. They gave me a uniform, I slept in the same shithole barracks, they gave me weapons. But whenever we were under fire I didn’t reach for my weapon, because the camera was my weapon and I was there to capture what was happening. So I would always grab the camera instead.

From a European standpoint, when we hear about a so-called ‘liberal bias’ in the media, we think, ‘Huh? What liberal bias?’

It’s absolutely real. I’ve seen it first hand. I spent time with the Baghdad correspondent for the LA Times. He was there for a period of time and he was just railing against Bush. And all these other reporters, too. Those who think of US news as being Fox News – that’s one channel against twenty. You’ve got CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC…

From a European perspective these channels don’t seem to be especially left-wing in their outlooks.

Maybe that’s because Europeans are partial to the left. What goes on with the US media is that the Democratic Party’s one hope for victory in the 2008 elections is for Iraq to be perceived as a loss. The thing is, Iraq is full of gangsters who want to rule their own kingdom. And that’s where the term ‘civil war’ gets misconstrued. It gets blown up by people with a political agenda, who want to paint the whole thing as a failure. If we do well there, they can’t say ‘The Republicans fucked up, so obviously, you should vote Democrat.’

You think the Democrats want Iraq to be a mess?

We’re living in the age of treason. It’s tragic. People are so short-sighted that they don’t want to look past their own noses, in terms of political power. They turn a blind eye to the consequences of defeat, because those consequences are an inconvenient truth, and they say ‘Listen, we need to convince the public that Iraq was a failure or we’re all going to lose our fucking jobs in the next election cycle.’

Do you think that America has lost its nerve to an extent?

Yes a lot of Americans have, to the drumbeat of the US mainstream media. I’m talking about the New York Times, CNN, especially NBC - they are the Ministry of Propaganda for the left wing of America, for the Democratic Party. This may sound fantastical to people, but I would ask you to cast the same cynicism toward everybody that you’re going to cast toward the Bush administration. It’s not so fantastical that people in the pursuit of power are going to turn against their country’s interest, that a media organisation would become more invested in propaganda than truth because of their own political aims. What we’re seeing here in America is the classic dark side of human nature, where people are willing to do anything in pursuit of power.

The obvious reaction to what you’ve just said is that it’s a perfect description of the Bush administration.

Sure, I admit that. I’m not here to draw conclusions. I want people to take a look at both sides and say, ‘how much of what I’m seeing is actually fact, and how much is propaganda that’s been drilled into my head since I was a kid?’ During the Vietnam war, to be against the war, to be against the administration – that was a way to be hip. You weren’t going to get laid if you were pro-war. And that sort of vibe still exists. People don’t want to admit that there are such things as bad guys. And there are bad guys that you can’t just talk to – ask any rape victim how successful she was in talking her rapist out of raping her. The reality in life is that you have bad people intent on bad things – in this case it’s domination of the planet, and in this specific case it’s domination of Iraq. You’re not going to talk these fuckers out of anything because they’re not interested in a peaceful solution; they’re only interested in victory. Therefore, you’ve got to kill the fuckers.

In the clips that I saw, you portrayed the soldiers kind of as the nonconformists, which goes completely against the way most people think.

In a large way they are. It’s cool to be antiwar, but these kids have a larger vision. They volunteered, and I was there with tons of them who volunteered again. They’d already been there and they would go back. The soldiers see this larger global war. They understand that it’s not an imaginary ghost, this concept of a Jihad machine that is looking to Islamise the world, to create Planet Islam. It was not ghosts that killed all my friends. When I was literally picking up the body parts of Iraqi women, children and men and putting them into bags, that suicide bomber was not a ghost. This enemy and its agenda is not a fantasy for Republican political ambitions. It is real, but unfortunately, because the Republicans are standing up to it, they’re being accused of creating it.

I don’t think anyone seriously doubts the threat of Islamic fundamentalism, though. That’s not the issue for most people.

I call it Islamic fascist imperialism.

Fair enough. What do you think of the idea that the left in Europe has abandoned its principles, in terms of its eagerness to support any cause, even if it’s essentially a fascist one, as long as its anti- American?

I agree with that idea. Why should you guys have to fight when the fucking Americans are going to do it? If you know that Daddy’s ultimately going to do the fucking job anyway… If you guys were standing naked and alone you might have a slightly different attitude. It’s cowardice. It’s like, let’s not stand up to it, let’s not paint a fucking bullseye on our asses.

On the subject of killing:

…I’m not a bloodthirsty guy. I’m trying to be a realist.

You say that, but did you not write an article in which you talk about the need for a “mature, reverent respect for killing,” and where you went on to say that “killing, the right kind of killing, is good, a sacred responsibility”? And that “we need to become men again … and teach our children well about fighting and killing. We will have no life, no America without them.”

Yeah, I said that. What I like to do at times is use a shocking level of language, not just for the sake of shocking people, but to make them think. You know, to shake somebody out of their stupor.

What did you mean by that? Because it is a striking thing to say. I read that quote to a few people and they said, ‘That guy sounds like a Nazi.’

Well, they’re wrong. It’s the exact opposite. My point is I’m trying to kill Nazis. I want to kill people who are trying to kill us. It’s about self-defence – about protecting life and liberty. Historically, we’re coming out of a pacifist culture where it was all about peace and love. And that’s all good. I want to get back to that place one day.

But you need to kill people to get there, is what you’re saying?

No, I’m saying we need to kill the enemy to get there. When I talk about killing, it’s about killing people who are trying to stop the peace. I want peace, but the problem now is that the enemy is trying to destroy our lives, so they need to be killed. That’s the reason for my shocking language. It’s to wake people up to the fact that the wolves are at the door. I’m as uncomfortable as anyone else with the notion of killing, but what I’m trying to say is it has to be done in the service of good. Let’s all just grow up and be real. Yes, there’s always the regret for the loss of a human life – but the truth is there’s also joy, because you know that in killing them you’ve prevented them from killing other innocent and good people. It’s a dark truth but it is the truth.

So when people say ‘Killing is wrong, no matter what’, you’ve no time for that?

Give me a fucking break.

What drove you to go out to Iraq?

To get to the truth.

I absolutely disagree with your politics, but I find that admirable.

I appreciate that. If I was a liberal who left Hollywood and came back with an anti-war piece, I would be sainted. Everyone would be like, ‘Oh my gosh, look at his morals, his ethics, his conviction, he’s a man to be admired.’ But because they disagree with my politics, the response is ‘he’s obviously insane’. Through one set of glasses it’s noble, through another set it’s insanity. Let the reader choose whichever glasses he wants to read through.

One of the things that interests me is that you came from a staunch liberal background.

Yes. Robert Kennedy, Jr. delivered the eulogy at my older sister’s funeral.

What happened to you politically? Was there a revelation?

It slowly came around over time. It started around 1993 – certain things and certain central tendencies of the left began to appear hypocritical to me. I noticed that the left tended to apply standards to others that they wouldn’t apply to themselves. I wanted to wipe the slate of beliefs clean and take a fresh look at everything, you know? And I found myself, piece by piece, gravitating more towards the right. In terms of a political party, I mostly chose the team that was going to be most effective. Choosing a political party is like choosing a wife - you’re not going to find the perfect one. But if you’re going to be effective and create policy changes and get stuff done, beyond just having an opinion of things and going out for marches on the streets, you kind of need to be involved with a team. That’s why, warts and all, I joined the Republican Party.

So you are a Republican?

I am indeed.