Paul Thomas: Iraq the movie, starring the Bushes, man and boy

Last week John Roughan mused on what Hollywood will make of the Iraq war. Quite a lot, if Vietnam is any guide, as it increasingly appears to be.

Super-patriot John Wayne was quick out of the blocks with The Green Berets, which cast the US military in the role of the mythic Western hero who comes in from the wilderness to do what a man's got to do to protect decent, God-fearing folk (the Vietnamese peasantry) from a gang of murderous predators (the Commies).

Almost 20 years later the Right tried to have the last word on the subject (if one can use that phrase, given the eponymous hero's inarticulateness) in Rambo: First Blood Part 11, which showed what the American fighting man would have done to said Commies if he hadn't been handicapped and betrayed by craven politicians and pot-smoking bleeding hearts.

In between there were a number of attempts to explore the Vietnam experience and its impact on America, from dehumanising the conscripts in the field to the collapse of trust in the institutions of state.

Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket and Francis Ford Coppola's scarcely noticed Gardens of Stone succeeded better than most.

Twenty-five years ago Hollywood wasn't quite the one-party mini-state it is today. Best picture at the 1979 Academy Awards was the powerful but xenophobic The Deer Hunter, and the sentimental anti-war confection Coming Home won best screenplay and best actress for Jane Fonda.

Afterwards Fonda, whose Hanoi Jane phase was an extreme expression of Hollywood's estrangement from the American heartland that continues to this day, denounced The Deer Hunter as a racist, Pentagon version of the war.

One suspects that if any Vietnam film stands the test of time it will be Coppola's Apocalypse Now, an uneven (screenwriter Robert Towne called it "Apocalypse Now and Then") spectacle that had flaws reflecting the drugged-out self-indulgence and insanity that pervaded the project from the outset.

As an example, Marlon Brando, who'd been allocated an unheard-of share of the profits and was being paid US$1 million a week, showed up for filming in the Philippines too fat to be shot in anything but close-up and harbouring such an aversion to co-star Dennis Hopper that he refused to do scenes with him.

A textbook case of life imitating art, Apocalypse Now is ultimately about a generation losing its bearings. Thus far, at least, Iraq hasn't generated the social tumult and generational conflict that informed many of these movies and enabled them to transcend the war genre.

Yet there are signs that Iraq and the wider war on terror are creating an alternative reality and twisted logic that recall both Apocalypse Now and the classic satire of military madness, Dr Strangelove: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

An American official described the suicide of three inmates at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp as good public relations for international terrorism. The camp commander called it an act of asymmetric warfare. Asymmetric warfare is defined as threats that are outside the range of conventional warfare and difficult to respond to in kind.

It's hard to know what, in fact, is the appropriate military response to men hanging themselves in their cells.

The Americans appeared to achieve a desperately needed success when they nailed America's second-most wanted man, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. But they quickly found themselves on the back foot fending off accusations that, having tried hard to exterminate the brute, they didn't try hard enough to prevent him dying from his injuries.

Iraq: The Movie could also be a father-and-son saga. Back in 1991 Bush snr went head-to-head with Saddam Hussein but didn't finish the job. Presumably mindful that there was no authorisation or international consensus for invading Iraq and bringing down the regime, he elected to abide by the UN mandate to expel the Iraqis from Kuwait.

But when Saddam put down the subsequent uprising that the US encouraged but didn't support and resumed thumbing his nose at Washington, the glow of victory dimmed and Bush snr was unceremoniously evicted from the White House.

Eight years later Bush jnr becomes President. He surrounds himself with his father's advisers and they vow to avoid the old man's mistakes. That means not getting entangled in UN resolutions that restrict your freedom to act; that means going it alone if necessary; that means finishing the job.

Easier said than done. With each passing day it becomes more likely that the US will slink out of Iraq with little of substance to show for the whole bloody, divisive, fantastically expensive and possibly counter-productive exercise.

Every gripping yarn needs a twist in the tail. It would be a nice irony if the only American political figure to emerge from the Iraq war with his reputation enhanced is the one deemed to have blown it the first time around: George Bush snr.