This movie (and book, apparently) is about Vietnam and American engagement there, but Vietnam could very easily be replaced with Iraq, with just a few changes in the plot. Fowler (the British journalist) personifies the attitude of the old Europe: he wants to float above the events, even as they begin to engulf him. Europe today wants to stay out of "America's" war with islamofascism, even as the bombs are starting to go off in Europe's capitals. That's not "their" war Yes, the bombs and the grenades are going off quite close - "After a while you learn to tell the difference between a grenade and an engin misfire", says the seemingly stoical Fowler to the startled Pyle - but as long as the hotel is comfy and they can sit for hours at a cafe, they can't be bothered.
All Fowler wants is comfortable life, a young, exotic lover, his dose of opium, and money from London. To get this he will bend his moral spine (if he has any left) and lie - to his boss at the newspaper and even to his lover. He doesn't see (well, chooses not to) any difference between the communists, the French colonialists, and the emerging Vietnamese nationalists backed by the Americans. Just like Europe today, which fools itself into appearance of "objectivity" by refusing to draw a distinction between the actions of the insurgents attacking American soldiers and civilians in Iraq, and of the American soldiers themselves. (Not to put too fine a point on it, but the Europeans actually do often appear to be "on the other side"...)
Pyle, on the other hand, wants to take sides, to act. His actions seem to be causing harm in the short run, but he presses on, believing that he sees "the big picture". He is young, naive, and idealistic, and he genuinely wants to make things right: to make Vietnam a better place, to marry Phuong, whom Fowler's selfishness placed on the fringe of the Vietnamese society. (She'll never get to marry a Vietnames man.) Obviously, this is not all pure altruism: Pyle's ultimate goal is to halt the spread of communism, prevent it from destroying Western civilization. Helping Vietnam is a mean to this end, not an end in itself. He also wouldn't be so generous to Phuong, had she been an old, toothless widow... ;-) Can you see the parallels with Iraq? The US genuinely wants to remake the Middle East, starting in Iraq. Not because of some great love for the Iraqis, but because it believes that by doing that, it (the US) will become safer from terrorism and rogue dictators in the future. The Americans really want to install democracy in Iraq and make it a prosperous model for the rest of the region. Can it succeed? I increasingly think that it can't. On the other hand, this idealistic attitude seems closer to me that the European cynicism and the "leave it alone, just show sympathy when something really bad happens" philosophy.
Fowler (end Europe) at times seems more humane than Pyle. He kneels down to give comfort to a terribly injured victim of a bomb attack, while Pyle wants to ensure that the photos of the massacre reach the Western press. He also is shaken by thy carnage, which Pyle sees as "collateral damage". However, Fowler's sympathy for the victims is temporary and superficial. He's happy to return to his comfortable hole of detachment, to his lover, and his opium. Can this be a better portrayal of Europe, which always offers words of sympathy and a trickle of aid, while doing nothing to help elliminate the causes of suffering? As long as the cafes stay open late and you can buy pot cheaply - what is there to get worked up about? There will always be misery around - this is life. And you get to sleep with willing, third world women, without having to mary them. Life's good for us, Europeans, let's keep it this way.
The end of the movie is quite telling, too. Pyle gets stabbed and dies. Fowler didn't kill him, but he knew this might happen and did nothing to prevent it. In fact, this was quite convenient for him, as it allowed him to keep Phuong, who now had no alternative. Was it deliberate? Who knows. It certainly looked this way to me - conscious inaction is, in fact, action. Europe wants America stabbed. She doesn't have the guts to do it with her own hand, so she silently counts on the islamofascists to do it. She won't openly call or pay for it, but she will look the other way when this happens. Europe is quite resentful of American youthful energy and the influence it has on the world. American pop culture and ideals permeate so many aspects of life in so many nations, replacing the European dominance. More people around the world listen to Eminem than to Beethoven today. It drives the European elites nuts.
What I like about this movie is that this clash of worldviews is not painted in broad brushstrokes. In fact, it is quite subtle and it does not seem that whoever wrote the script took sides. Yes, I tend to identify strongly with Pyle, but I can imagine that lots of people would find Fowler's actions and attitude more appealing. I'm afraid that, just like in Vietnam, the resolution of the Iraq crisis will again be ambiguous, and the story will replay itself again some other time, in some other country. (Well, to many people, especially in Europe, the resolution of the war in Vietnam was anything but ambiguous: the imperialist Americans lost, the Vietnamese won. I beg to differ, and so did the thousands of "boat people".)
