It would almost be too easy to ask what controversial director Oliver Stone was smoking when he made the following comments at a recent European film festival:
The director of blockbusters such as “Platoon,” and “JFK” said the U.S. reaction to the attacks was out of proportion.
“If there had been a better sense of preparation, if we had a leadership that was more mature,” he said. “We did not fight back in the same way that the British fought the IRA or the Spanish government fought the Basques here. Terrorism is a manageable action. It can be lived with,” said Stone.
After all, “controversial” is the adjective that Stone seems to have made a career upon. Controversy, however, doesn’t mask foolishness for long. The notion that “terrorism is a manageable action” — much less a thing that can be lived with — betrays just how far removed Stone really is from rational thought.
Perhaps in Stone’s Hollywood bubble terrorism can be lived with, endured, even made into a star itself. In places like Haifa, London, New York, and Washington D.C. — places where the results of terrorism cannot be lived with — the outlook is quite different.