"Path to War" or Warpath?"
Path to War
Directed by John
Frankenheimer (2002)

It seems the ruling class will not be
contented in churning out films extolling
their class virtues and painting their
enemies the grimmest black. They not
only turn out films, documentaries and
books rationalizing the mistakes of their
icons like Theodore Roosevelt, Truman,
Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Nixon and
others, they also make special
“historical” feature films for television.
The latest HBO feature film “Path to
War” about Lyndon B. Johnson is one
these petty-bourgeois revisionist films.
The film tried very hard to humanize
Lyndon B. Johnson as a U.S. president.

As all bourgeois revisionist films about
historical figures, they tried to make it
appear that Johnson was an unwilling
tool manipulated by his advisers—
notably former U.$. “Defense” Secretary
Robert McNamara. McNamara in turn is
portrayed as manipulated by Pentagon
generals running the war by remote
control from the comforts of their war
rooms in Washington.

“Path to War” vainly tried to portray
Johnson as a moderate policy maker and
an unwilling captive of Pentagon and the
State Department who was fed wrong
information about the conduct of the war
in Vietnam. Even if this were true—then
who is responsible for deceiving the
public if the highest policy maker got the
round-around? Maybe it’s the Amerikan
public themselves who should be
blamed?

Appearing as a copycat of “Thirteen
Days”, a recent Kevin Costner’s film
about the Cuban Crisis, “Path to War”
made a sloppy carbon copy of how the
Kennedy administration dealt with the
Cuban missile crisis in 1962. Unlike the
“Thirteen Days” that showed the cracks
and the differences between different
camps in the bourgeois government,
“Path to War” shows Johnson as a
pathetic hostage to the complex military
situation.

[Either way—whether a clueless dupe
or conscious warmonger—Johnson bears
responsibility for the war. Like
McNamara’s recent string of books,
“Path to War” is a facile attempt to
exonerate “the best and the brightest”
who led Amerika during the Vietnam
war. “If only we know now what we
know then,” the story goes, “we would
never have gotten involved.” Bullshit.
They knew everything then; yet chose to
get involved--out of a combination of
arrogance and the material dictates of
imperialism.]

The film’s high point was to show
Johnson grew tired of personally writing
letters of condolences for the tens of
thousands of Amerikan soldiers killed in
combat. [Too bad he didn’t have to write
a letter of apology and sign a reparations
check for every one of the millions of
people killed by Amerikan bullets and
bombs in Vietnam.]

The only remaining problem these
propagandists face is that these films
have no appeal to the public. The TV
audience would rather watch the
“Simpson’s” [which at least comments
on contemporary issues in an entertaining
fashion.]

—MZ276, a friend of MIM