The two films, Zero Dark Thirty and Collateral Murder, focus on the operations of the United States of America security forces in fighting against terrorism and threats to the safety of the people living the United States of America and throughout the world. The videos have a series of events that show the way the United States of America military handle terrorists and other security threats and the way that they run their security operations. In the film Zero Dark Thirty, the interrogation program and events that led to the capture of the then most wanted person in the world Osama Bin Laden is shown. Zero Dark Thirty is a thriller film that shows the way the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) hunted and took down Osama, apart from Osama, the movie also shows the different plans that the CIA used to take down most of Al Qaeda’s top leaders (Žižek n.p). Osama Bin Laden was one of the most wanted men in the United States of America after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. After the attack, the security agencies in the United States of America put up a hunt to try and find him so that he could be held responsible for the terrorist attacks that had been conducted under his watch around the world (Mitchell 26). The dramatic events that led to the discovery of his compound in Pakistan a decade after the September 11, 2001 attack on the United States of America are captured in the movie Zero Thirty.
The video Collateral Murder was a classified United States of America military video which depicted the indiscriminate killing of several people in an Iraqi suburb known as New Baghdad. The film was released by Wikileaks in the year 2010 and shows how a United States of America army air strike killed a dozen civilians including two journalists that worked for the Reuters. Before the release of the video, Reuters had been trying to establish the way their staff was killed but had not achieved any success. They had even asked for help from the United States of America military, but after the investigations, it was said that the United States of America military had acted according to the laws of armed engagement and the set rules. In the video, the United States of America air military officers are seen shooting at the journalists and their rescuers who had not provoked the officers in any way. Two of them were young children who were left with severe injuries (Froomkin n.p). Unlike the film Zero Dark Thirty, the clip Collateral Murder shows how the operations of the United States of America officers live. In the clip, the officers are seen shooting at the people who are on the ground. The communication by the officers over the radio call is subtitled making it easier to understand their conversation and the events that took place. After shooting is over, the military on the ground rescues the two children who are severely injured after the rescue van that they were in was shot at by the military officers.
There are several similarities between the two videos. In both videos, the efforts of the United States of America security agencies to ensure that the citizens of the country are safe and that no terror attack takes place in the nation are depicted. For instance, in the film, Zero Dark Thirty, the efforts of the security agencies to hunt down the top leaders of the Al Qaeda terrorist group are depicted. The events span over a period of 10 years; this is after the September 11, attack to the time when the leaders of the Al Qaeda terrorist group Osama Bin Laden was killed in the year 2011. The movie shows how the security agencies used enhanced interrogation techniques to obtain information from people whom they believed knew something; this included civilians. The events that are depicted in the movie are said to real and that there is no possible exaggeration. The events are marked as genuine and that they represent the experience of the untold story about the greatest manhunt in history. The enhanced interrogation techniques depicted in the movie are tortuous, they represent the policies that were put in place by the CIA to obtain information. These techniques were applied to both civilians and those people who were suspected to have a hand in terrorist activities. The tortuous treatment that is given to the civilians in the movie Zero Dark Thirty is similar to the treatment that is shown in the film that was released by Wikileaks Collateral Murder. Just like the torture that was directed at civilians in the movie Zero Dark Thirty, the treatment of civilians in the film Collateral Murder is disregarded. The security officers shoot at the people who had not provoked them in any way, and they had not established their identities.
In the film Collateral Murder, after the rescue van arrives, the officers do not spot any weapon on the rescuers, even though, they still shoot at them without establishing their identities or any form of provocation. As a result, two young children are shot and severely injured. When they are receiving treatment at the army’s medical facility, the officers receive commands to hand the children over to the Iraqi police so that they can be treated at an Iraqi hospital; this meant that the children could not be able to receive high-quality medical care and there were to be delayed. Similarly, in the movie Zero Dark Thirty, the CIA officers leave their victims with severe injuries, and they do not seem to care about their medication or wellbeing after going through the torturous interrogations. The film Collateral Murder is supported by the events that are depicted by the Zero Dark Thirty film, the torturous interrogations leave people including civilians severely injured, and they are not accorded any form of help.
Both movies seem to foster the amount of hate that exists between the people of the West and the Muslims who live in the East. For instance, in the movie Zero Dark Thirty, Muslims and Arabs, in general, are depicted as terrorists and people who hate the United States of America. They are also presented as people who can do anything to harm the citizens of the United States of America. Similarly, in the film clip Collateral Murder, the people officers of the United States of America military force are presented as people who can harm or even kill Arabs or Muslim civilians in their country even without any form of provocation (Christensen 2597). Because of these depictions, it can be seen that the hate between the individuals who come from the different regions where the films are based is fostered. One sees the other as the enemy, and this can lead to further instability. The events that are depicted in the Zero Dark Thirty movie are supported by the events that take place in the Collateral Murder film, the security officers of the United States can be seen injuring or even killing civilians knowingly and unknowingly.
Works Cited
Christensen, Christian. "WikiLeaks and the afterlife of collateral murder." International Journal of Communication 8.10 (2014): 2593-2602.
Froomkin, Dan. "WikiLeaks VIDEO Exposes 2007'Collateral Murder'In Iraq." The Huffington Post (2010).
Mitchell, Darren. "Zero dark thirty." Zadok Perspectives 119 (2013): 26.
Žižek, Slavoj. "Zero Dark Thirty: Hollywood ‘s gift to American power." The Guardian 25 (2013).
