The Long Shadows of Black Smoke. The Enduring Legacy of the Gulf War
Guest Author: Kevin Fox
The Bang-Bang Podcast features occasional guest essays grappling with the films we cover and their intersections with history, politics, and culture. The essay below comes from Kevin Fox, our guest on the two-part episode covering Three Kings (1999).
I was born while the Kuwaiti Oil fields burned. My mom is an environmental scientist, so she studied what happened closely. I remember seeing photos of towers of smoke that reached high into the sky, blotting out the sun, oil residue turning white sand black. At the time, I was Catholic and believed in hell. To me, those oil fields looked like hell on earth.
The long shadow cast by the victory of the Gulf War provided shade over my childhood. America's military might had surrounded me as we secured our Post-Cold-War status as the sole global superpower. I remember Cobra helicopters facing the bus with their rocket pods and Gatling guns as they took off from the National Guard base on my route home. I remember the house shuddering whenever a Blackhawk took a low pass over us.
The Gulf War is one of those moments in history that seems so insignificant on its surface. It, Kosovo, Grenada, and Panama made us think Vietnam was a fluke. It propped up an illusion of our greatness. It was the largest coalition put together since World War II to reclaim the sovereignty of an invaded country. The war made us think we could change the world through righteous military intervention. I grew up in an America that felt like a force for good, even though I now know it wasn't the case. It was an illusion.
While ostensibly about saving Kuwait, the Gulf War was also about oil, to which the entire world economy was lashed. Saddam invaded Kuwait for their oil to stave off an economic collapse caused by his war in Iran and to nullify his creditors in the emirate.
September 11th, 2001. Towers of smoke reached high into the sky in New York and Virginia—more long shadows blocking the sun. A reason given for this horrific act by Osama Bin Laden was American deployment in oil-rich Saudi Arabia in the aftermath of Saddam's invasion of Kuwait.
November 2001, 1 month after the invasion of Afghanistan. Guardsmen behind sandbags at Detroit International Airport as my family flew to London for a business trip. The world had our sympathy. Everyone felt closer. When we returned, the house shuddered increasingly as those Blackhawks increased their low passes. Even as a young kid, I knew that was a sign we were gearing up for more war.
London, April 2003. I visited with my family again. The goodwill was gone—mass protests in the streets over our invasion of Iraq. Baghdad burned on the BBC. I watched Saddam's statue fall in our hotel room. In the back of my mind, I couldn't quite parse what connection Saddam had to Al Qaeda and the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Less than a month later, the insurgency began.
Three Kings is a movie about the failure of the Gulf War. Our protagonist, Troy, is the quintessential middle-class American, selfish and unable to see the harm his actions cause until it's right in front of his face. The film deals with a real issue that undermined America as it took an ill-fated adventure to "finish the job" that Bush Sr. started. A job that then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney dismissed as setting up a quagmire like Vietnam back in the 1990s. As the Gulf War was wrapping up, the United States started seizing on Saddam's weakness. We flooded Iraqi airwaves with calls to rise up, promising aid that never came. Thousands perished in crackdowns. We saved the Kurds while leaving Southern Iraq on its own. Is it any wonder that we weren't seen as liberators as Dick Cheney claimed?
July 7th, 2005, My parents turned on the news. I saw a transport station I visited multiple times on family trips filled with police. Al Qaeda affiliates had bombed London. One of the reasons given was the Iraq War.
The 2010s. Iraq destabilized the Middle East. Al Qaeda moved in, followed by ISIS, as the nation fell apart. Iran backed militias as a way to get at America through a lens of plausible deniability. The situation in Iraq made it so ISIS could leverage the chaos of the Syrian civil war to wage a brutal campaign to force a theocratic dictatorship across the Levant. More towers of black smoke as places like Mosul burned—fires in Australia, Greece, Russia, and Canada as climate change ramped up.
February 6th, 2025, I write this, having just recently returned from evacuating the most serious fire to have ever faced Los Angeles. Another dark shadow from smoke blotted out the sky. Our obsession with fossil fuel, a key motivator for the Gulf and Iraq Wars, played a massive part in the climate change that led to these fires. America believes she is invincible, yet looking out at our country today, it's never looked more fragile. The current government wants to eliminate anything that would challenge fossil fuels, even as they make our world a reflection of those burning oil fields. I see people in power who are so traumatized by 25 years of conflict that they can't even conceive of anything other than doubling down on our failed war on terror and seizing land in imperial conquest, convinced that they can relive the glory days of America's past. A multipolar world seems inevitable, but it doesn't seem like it will make us any safer.
More towers of smoke loom in the future. Maybe we can turn this around. Maybe not. Either way, destruction is guaranteed if we don't stop and ask why we continue this suicide pact with the status quo.
Kevin Fox is a writer and director based in Los Angeles. His award-winning short film, Happy Traveler, is currently on the festival circuit. He is working on his debut novel, Ashes.
Kevin can be found on Bluesky @michigrim.