THE FINAL YEAR

THE FINAL YEAR is a documentary about Pres. Barack Obama’s last year in office, but concentrates on the President and his top staff’s foreign policy activities. THE FINAL YEAR is, of course, a propaganda piece full of politically correct attitudes and fails to give any truly insightful, in-depth analysis of Obama’s approach to foreign policy, but it does accurately portray the basic themes of that policy and the various personalities involved.

The movie begins by showing U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power, her children and their Hispanic nanny in the White House corridors as Powers starts another day. It quickly introduces other foreign policy actors, including Secretary of State John Kerry and National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes, as they travel around the world dealing with various hot-button issues. Some of the issues (like the Russian bombing of some aid vehicles in Syria that rightfully but ironically upset Kerry and Power) are urgent, while others are not (such as a trip to Vietnam).

THE FINAL YEARS has no in-depth film time with the President. Obama often just flits in and out of the picture as the filmmakers focus on Kerry, Power and Rhodes. In one scene toward the end, Power, Rhodes and other people watch TV as the news programs announce that Donald Trump has defeated Hillary Clinton in the electoral vote. Dejectedly, Rhodes goes outside to suffer what happened, and, for once, he’s totally speechless about Trump’s stunning victory in the momentous election.

Because of its subject matter and inside peak at Pres. Obama’s foreign policy staff, THE FINAL YEAR is inherently interesting and even captivating. However, there’s little to no structure to the movie, so it lacks a beginning, a middle and a climactic ending. The jeopardy turns out to be Donald Trump’s victory, but that has nothing to do with Obama’s foreign policy, other than the apparent fact that many American voters obviously were fed up with the feckless way Obama and his staff dealt with such tyrants as the murderous Castro brothers, the murderous Mullahs running Iran, the murderous Muslims leading the ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq, and the Russian government, which managed again to become a player in the Middle East and Syria after Pres. Reagan’s policies kicked them out in the 1980s, thanks to Obama’s poor handling of Syria, Iraq and the Middle East.

It is here that the major weakness of THE FINAL YEAR raises its ugly head. Power, Rhodes, Kerry, and some speeches by Pres. Obama talk a lot about reaching out to people from other nations and using diplomacy instead of relying on military force and strength. In one section, Rhodes discusses Pres. Obama’s peace initiative to Fidel Castro and Communist Cuba, but says nothing about the brutalities of Castro’s regime. In another section or two, the movie shows Obama officials briefly discussing the President’s “deal” with Iran, but again not a word is said about the brutalities of that Islamic regime. Basically, then, the movie is just a shallow apology for Obama’s attitude of appeasement. At one point, Power even complains about the “realism” of past approaches to foreign policy, which focused on the idea that each country’s leaders act in their own self-interest. Often, the self-interest matches up with the self-interests of the people in those countries, but sometimes it doesn’t. The problem, of course, is that Power and Obama’s idealistic approach to diplomacy doesn’t work and didn’t work! What really works is the “realistic” approach where the Unites States acknowledges the self-interest of other nations and their leaders while supporting its own diplomatic efforts with its vast military power and strength.

One telling part of the documentary is how often the filmmakers show Muslims in Islamic garb versus how few times (only once or twice) does it show any Christians. In fact, one of Rhodes’s major assistants is indeed a Muslim. Of course, the movie contains no examples of Obama’s staff dealing with any Israeli, Jewish officials. In effect, these Pro-Muslim images are possibly a subtle but undeniable symbol of the movie’s Anti-Semitic, Christophobic desire (and Pres. Obama’s own apparent desire) to supplant Christianity, Judaism and the Bible and traditional American values reflecting America’s biblical heritage with Islam and its terror-filled “holy” book, the Qur’an.

That said, THE FINAL YEAR does have some positive content reflecting high moral standards. At one point, for example, the movie shows Pres. Obama giving a brief impassioned speech about the sacrifices America’s troops make overseas. Though Obama’s policies were filled with appeasement and false idealism, his desire to stop violence and promote peace is admirable, if a bit naïve.

Here, it’s important to recall that, as Paul says in Romans 13, the chief goal of government is to “punish evildoers.” As Paul says in Romans 13:4, government “does not bear the sword in vain,” and it is for that purpose that we pay our taxes. In discussing government policies, it’s also important to remember that, contrary to Samantha Power and her idealistic view of human beings, Paul tells us in Romans 3:23, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” As God Himself tells Noah in Genesis 8:21, “EVERY inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood.”

THE FINAL PLAN has a few obscenities and some newsreel footage of light violence. However, it’s because of the movie’s shallow, misguided, unrealistic, and false approach to foreign policy and failure to consider any of the many criticisms Pres. Obama got for his foreign policy that THE FINAL PLAN deserves an extreme caution.