Given that this is the 4th Christmas where our troops have been in Iraq while the chickenhawks, and particularly the guy who skipped out on his duties with the Texas National Guard while others of this age were getting killed and maimed in a war he claimed to support, who put them there have remained safe at home, the most appropriate movie scene with a Christmas song appears in Carl Foreman’s 1963 film “The Victors.” As “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” plays on the soundtrack, a G.I. is led across a snowy field and shot by an American firing squad, presumably for desertion. It is perhaps no surprise that “The Victors”, despite being a major all-star production with a roadshow release, has never been released on VHS or, to date, DVD, and is only available in low quality bootleg copies.

For movies that you can see, the best Xmas scene for Christmas 2007 appears in Stalag 17, where Ross Bagdasarian, who a few years later would inflict upon the world “Alvin and Chipmunks,” sang Harry Archer’s “I Love You” while his fellow captured airmen celebrate the holiday. What makes this scene especially effective today is its context: even though the film’s creators had no reason to portray the Nazis in a favorable light — the writers had been recent residents of a POW camp, and the director (Billy Wilder) had lost his mother, grandmother, and stepfather at Auschwitz) in “Stalag 17″ the Nazis recognize the Geneva convention and allow inspectors from the Red Cross to visit and to hear the barracks chiefs’ complaint that another POW may be being tortured that very moment. It’s a sad commentary on how far we’ve sunk that Nazis in World War II come across better than Americans in the GWOT.

I apologize if others have made similar comments before this appears in the thread, but getting my first comment on firedoglake since its “improvement” has been more complicated than breaking into Fort Knox.

Now that I’ve got a second chance, let me add something about Carl Foreman’s impossible-to-see 1963 war film, “The Victors.” (Maybe someone in the Firedoglake family who’s a biggie at a studio can see about getting this film released on DVD.) “The Victors” also contains a scene that showcases an aspect of The Greatest Generation that I’ve never seen highlighted elsewhere, even in films by WWII footsoldier Sam Fuller or in documentaries, like the recent one by Ken Burns, that touch upon the disgraceful treatment of African-Americans during World War II: Black G.I.s are assaulted and severely beaten by white GIs for having the audacity to enter a bar where whites are drinking, after which a Brit who witnessed this racist attack asks a white GI something like — I’m relying on my memory of a December 1963 viewing — “Why are you doing this? Aren’t you all Americans” and receives no answer.

When Firedoglake returns to the FISA, I’ll return to the subject of Foreman and “High Noon,” a film that many a male politician thinks is the story of his life, and why only Chis Dodd is entitled this belief.

Meanwhile, a Merry Christmas to those who created the best political blog, plus their peanut and/or poodles!