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Filmaker Oliver Stone Decries US Addiction To Endless Wars
U.S. troops training near Fort Stewart, Ga, 2012. | Photo: Twitter/ @jacobin
"America has always prepared for war," Stone pointed out, adding that the United States avoids war only when "there's more money in preparing for war than going to war."
U.S. Academy Award-winning film director Oliver Stone denounced America's addiction to endless wars and notorious record of interference in other countries' internal affairs.
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"I've talked to a lot of Afghan and Iraq veterans, and there's a tremendous disturbance here going on. The suicide rate is so much higher than ordinary, normal (wars)," Stone, a Vietnam War veteran, said.
He noted that U.S. veterans returning from the Middle East have expressed strong discontent over their country's obsession with endless wars, adding they "know subconsciously or consciously" that they were fed with lies and were sent to Iraq and Afghanistan for "selfish interests," out of mere political considerations.
Stone blasted the U.S. for recently stoking military tensions with Russia over Ukraine, accusing Washington of violating its promise not to expand eastward the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). He also lashed out at the U.S. military buildup targeting China, which he observed has accelerated since the U.S. "pivot to Asia" strategy in 2012, and at its arms sales to Taiwan.
Besides being a historian, Oliver Stone is world-renowned for directing movies such as Platoon, Wall Street, and Born on the Fourth of July. In his latest documentary, "JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass," he delved into the unanswered mysterious behind the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
"I'm not sure I'm in charge of this entire government because they're doing things off the shelf... nobody bucks them (the intelligence agencies and the military), nobody challenges them, nobody," the filmmaker said, quoting Kennedy's words.
In his eyes, the country's economy is heavily reliant on its military-industrial complex, and its politics lies in the hands of intelligence agencies and the military. This is due to "the military Keynesian policies coming up right after World War II," which kept U.S. administrations "militarizing the economy, pumping money into weapons" to sustain the economy.
"America has always prepared for war," he said, adding that the United States avoids war only when "there's more money in preparing for war than going to war."
Oliver Stone: The US is Waging a War Against Russia Since 2006
"No country on earth would survive should the world’s most powerful nuclear states unleash their atomic weapons", Vladimir Putin said in an interview with American film director Oliver Stone in 2017. | Photo: Twitter @UnBmanntAufLand
The American Oscar-winning director, famous for his work on such movies as Midnight Express, Scarface, and JFK, was criticized for a series of interviews he made with Vladimir Putin in 2017, viewed by some Western media outlets as an advocacy project for the Russian president.
American film director Oliver Stone has said in an interview with The Washington Post that the US has been waging a "war" against Russia for over a decade. "There has been a campaign, a war against Russia going on for a long time. It started again in the US around 2006-2007, when he made that speech at Munich", Stone suggested.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin condemned U.S. attempts to dominate the global agenda and act unilaterally during his speech at the 2007 Munich Conference. He argued that decisions to invade foreign countries should only be made in the United Nations and condemned NATO's continuing expansion to the east, closer to Russia's borders, in violation of all existing agreements.
In his interview with the Washington Post, Stone also disputed the West's routine claims about Russia acting aggressively or threateningly. "I think there is no evidence really of the aggressiveness of Russia. The aggressiveness is truly coming from the NATO forces that have encircled Russia and that are also encircling China", the director claimed.
Stone has been previously criticized for supposedly advocating on behalf of Vladimir Putin and his policies in a series of interviews with the Russian president, the first broadcast in 2017 – when relations between Moscow and Western countries had begun going downhill. When asked by the Washington Post, the renowned director dismissed allegations that he was intentionally non-confrontational with Putin and some of his previous interviewees, such as former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
Stone insisted that he simply wanted to let these people speak for themselves and share their views on things rather than press them and force them to assume a defensive posture.
