When "stuff happens," artists fill in the blanks

At some point in the course of a war, the words of generals and politicians become irrelevant and artists take the stage to make sense of it all. The American experience in Iraq provides much fertile ground for reflection and it's essential that artistic works emerge if we are to draw the proper lessons from the chaos and carnage we have created.

Long after the news headlines fade and video clips get replaced in Internet caches, how we remember Iraq — the story we will tell ourselves about this conflict — will shape our attitudes toward future conflicts and the risks of American involvement in new wars.

David Hare's award-winning play, "Stuff Happens," opens this month at ACT Theatre in Seattle. Hare, a British playwright, skewers the White House-Downing Street gang, often using direct quotes from the architects of the Iraq war, including Donald Rumsfeld's famous quip, "Stuff happens," when asked about our lack of preparation for the civil disorder arising after the rout of the Iraqi army.

The play evokes the mood that we are watching a train wreck in slow motion. We all know the ending of this tale from the moment we enter the theater, but we are riveted by the forward motion of the action and the hubris of so many of the leading characters. Colin Powell comes across as Hamlet, torn between his fear of America ruling 25 million ungovernable Iraqis and his loyalty to the president. Tony Blair dances ambivalently between the notion that he must back American policy to keep Britain relevant on the world stage and his personal doubts about the quality of intelligence he receives claiming that Saddam Hussein possesses nuclear weapons.

With the principals speaking directly to the audience, we witness the cool arrogance of a policy that put blind ideology above all other considerations and ignored postwar planning. In the end, the "reality" of the play is more real than the thousands of news reports we have read and watched since George W. Bush's decision to go to war, because it captures the essence of what goes wrong when naked ideology trumps people of reason. If you want to understand what led us into and keeps us in Iraq, turn off your TV and go see this play.

"Stuff Happens" is an early example of the art that will emerge to encapsulate this war in the public mind. Much like the movies and books that came out of Vietnam, fictional works about Iraq will define our collective memory and inform our collective attitudes about future conflicts in remote lands.

Many of us "remember" Vietnam for the searing images of "Apocalypse Now" and "Platoon," rather than the years of contemporary newspaper articles and TV reports. The wary footsteps of Oliver Stone's young soldiers patrolling a rice paddy in an Asian jungle vividly brought home the dangers of introducing American soldiers into a guerrilla war where they didn't understand the language or the cultural landscape. The surrealistic images of Francis Ford Coppola's "Apocalypse Now," especially Marlon Brando's crazed Colonel Kurtz, portrayed the essence of how Vietnam warped the psyche of many soldiers who became entangled in its web.

In a different era, Pablo Picasso evoked the sense of futility and destruction of the Spanish Civil War in his classic mural, "Guernica," which became an anti-war emblem for future generations. In the same vein, the images of last year's award-winning film, "Pan's Labyrinth," convey the horror of that conflict in the mind of an 11-year-old girl who escapes into a fantasy world. The bizarre creature who holds his gouged out eyes in his hands symbolizes the brutality of witnessing war more forcefully than any historical document.

Only through art can we truly make sense of conflict that takes innocent life and dehumanizes those who become embroiled in its battles. The danger of art is that it can be twisted for political purposes, just like any other form of propaganda. It's entirely possible that the same neoconservatives who brought us the war in Iraq will sponsor plays, films and novels that selectively showcase our good intentions, while ignoring the bitter consequences.

Like the propaganda films of Leni Riefenstahl for the Third Reich, great art can be built on an evil edifice. That's why I'm encouraged to see "Stuff Happens" hold a clear mirror up to the making of our foreign-policy nightmare in Iraq.

Alex Alben, a high-tech executive based in Seattle, writes regularly on technology, media and politics for The Seattle Times. He is a member of the ACT Theatre board of directors.