Director Todd Phillips’ new film “War Dogs” is an infuriating two-hour exercise in what smells like U.S. Pentagon propaganda. Starring an extra-sleazy Jonah Hill as Efraim Diveroli and a surprisingly endearing Miles Teller as David Packouz, the film is loosely based on “real life events” surrounding two old friends who form an unlikely business partnership to illegally sell weapons to the U.S. military, make it big, and then fall from grace. (See Rolling Stone writer Guy Lawson’s 2007 investigative feature “The Stoner Arms Dealers” for the real story).

To understand “infuriating,” take this quick two-question quiz.

Question #1: Which country poses the greatest threat to 21^st century world peace?

Russia?

China?

Iran?

Surprise!

In an end-of-the-year 2014 WIN/Gallup International poll of 66,000 people in 65 of the 190+ countries around the world, 24% of those surveyed stated that the United States is “the greatest threat to peace in the world today.” (Pakistan and China proved a distant second and third, with 8% and 6% respectively, while Afghanistan, Iran, Israel and North Korea tied for fourth with 4% each.

Question #2: Which country sells more weapons to the 21^st century world than any other?

I am guessing you probably know the answer.

The United States remains the world’s preeminent exporter of arms, with more than 50 percent of the global weaponry market controlled by the U.S. as of 2014, goosed by the Obama administration’s wheeling-and-dealing and green-lighted by Hillary Clinton’s State Department, sales include multibillion dollar deals with some of the world’s most repressive governments – Qatar and Saudi Arabia among them. (See the New York Times investigative article published last year.) 2014 saw U.S. arms sales jump 35 percent, or nearly $10 billion, to $36.2 billion, according to the Congressional Research Service report, which analyzed the global arms market between 2007 and 2014. The top weapons buyer in 2014 was South Korea, a key American ally, which has been squaring off with an increasingly belligerent North Korea in recent years. Iraq (ironically!) was the second biggest weapons buyer, as the country seeks to build up its military capacity following the withdrawal of the bulk of American ground troops there. Brazil was the third biggest buyer, primarily of Swedish aircraft.

So along comes “War Dogs,” a film that glamorizes two American stoner dudes and their quest to make as much money as possible selling illegal weapons from their outpost in the world’s richest and most powerful empire.

It just doesn’t sit right.

Sure, Jonah Hill plays Efraim Diveroli to the sleazy hilt, with a number of funny one liners and his usual gift for timing and comic delivery. And yes, Miles Teller is charming as the innocent massage therapist/boyfriend (of the super sexy Cuban actress Ana de Armas) who gets sucked into the seductive maw of profit and power. “War dogs,” our two arms dealer dudes state, are “bottom feeders who made money off the war without ever stepping foot on the battlefield. Meant to be a derogatory,” they conclude, “but we kinda liked the phrase.”

And I didn’t like this movie. What’s missing in Hollywood’s greasy glorification of the U.S. arms trade, of course, are the stories of real life victims all over the world who find themselves on the other side of the very big barrel of U.S. imperial aggression. “You keep supplying the guns,” says Efraim to one of his General customers in “War Dogs, “and we’ll keep killing the bad guys.” This is a gigantic and tragic misconception of what is actually going on in the real world. “Bad guys,” as it turns out, are Yemeni women and children being obliterated by Saudi weapons supplied by the U.S. government, courtesy of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Syrians refugees whose land has been destroyed, both by thousands of U.S. air bombing raids over the past two years, and U.S. weapons now in the hands to ISIS “terrorists.” One million dead Iraqis, including hundreds of thousands of children, since the illegal U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 (4 million displaced Iraqis still are seeking new homes). And this is just a partial accounting of lives lost in the Arab World alone during the past ten plus years.

“When does telling the truth ever help anybody?” asks Efraim to David. And yet – the truth can set us free. I think it’s time for more truth from Hollywood about what is actually going on out there. Stop telling stories glorifying U.S. imperial state-sponsored violence and those who profit from it. Start telling stories that complicate our thinking about how we make a more just and humane 21^st century world. This may be too much to ask of Hollywood – but as film consumers and citizens both, it is time to demand more accountability from one of the world’s most powerful media propaganda machines.

Rob Williams is the publisher of The Vermont Independent.