Red Dawn (Yes, The Movie) & Iraq

[hostagecow]

I've noticed recently that AMC has been replaying the classic eighties film "Red Dawn" directed by John Milius (the original screewriter for "Apocalypse Now.") The movie imagines America being conquered by the Soviets with the help of the Cubans. Most of the movie follows a rugged band of teenage American insurgents in Colorado. As I watched the film I was struck by how applicable it is to Iraq...the question I kept coming back to is this: If some foreign power came and occupied your land, killed your brother, incarcerated your father, would you take up arms against him? The answer is, of course you would.

At first when I first saw the movie on tv again, I just laughed. It's really a boyhood fantasy flick about turning the local boy scout troop into a guerilla band. The dialogue is really bad at times. But the more I thought about it, the idea of simply sympathizing with many of the nationalist Iraqi (non-AQI & Salafist types) insurgents we've been fighting over there took on more valence.

Ten years ago, "Red Dawn" was just another bad eighties movie. Now I'm starting to think that it's one of the most trenchant films for Americans to watch to understand their enemy because there's no intervening cultural static. We see Americans doing what many Iraq insurgents are doing: attacking enemy armor columns, watching the enemy shoot himself in the foot through his cultural arrogance, growing increasingly frustrated and turning to torture as his losses mount.

Obviously, the issues aren't this simple. Iraq isn't 1980s America. We're not the Soviets. But in my two trips to Iraq, I've found myself wondering what kind of person would become an insurgent. I came to the conclusion that I'm exactly the kind of person that would.

[Abu Buckwheat]

Obviously, the issues aren't this simple. Iraq isn't 1980s America. We're not the Soviets. But in my two trips to Iraq, I've found myself wondering what kind of person would become an insurgent. I came to the conclusion that I'm exaclty the kind of person that would.

Good point ... once in Iraq I saw a Bradley Fighting Vehicles with the word "Wolverines" and the Wolverine symbol from Red Dawn on his turret ... my first thought was, you've got the shoe on the wrong foot. God forbid the enemy IO get a hold of that symbol and start using it to insult us in Iraq with graffitti tags.

[FascistLibertarian]

Any country that occupied the States (not that this would happen of course) would be in for the mother of all counter insurgencies.

[goesh]

I sure wouldn't want AQ and other jihadists coming into my neighborhood, using my house for safehouse, commandeering my resources, killing my neighbors because they worked for the Iraqi government or the Americans, blowing up the market where I shop, questioning my fidelity to shariah law. I would probably join the Iraqi army or a police force. I might even provide Intel to the Americans free of charge. Of course there is a chance I might take up arms against the Americans too under other circumstances. If I were a good criminal, I would fight for and against both sides of the coin, no pun or metaphor intended. Under other non-criminal cirumstances, I might fight against the Government and Americans then turn around and fight for them. I might even cross the border into Iran and Turkey and fight them believing they are the only true enemy, if I were a Kurd that is. The real, born-to-kill warriors are constrained by ROE on our side and are getting killed off pretty fast on the other side and that leaves a massive hodge-podge of conflicting ideologies and politics and morals being played out with no real end in sight. The great Lakota commander, Crazy Horse, was always plagued by his young men that would want to count coup or grab a couple of horses and then stop killing pony soldiers during a fight. Some things don't change too much over the years. Look to commerce and children at play to gauge the light at the end of the tunnel. The more shops that are open and the more you see children outdoors playing, the more stable it is. When the average Iraqi can sleep with his wife instead of his AK, we can go home. Until then, stand your ground.

[MASON]

The whole point of not disbanding the army is to gain control of all the lists and I mean pleural (people, equipment,arms, etc)and even then to continue paying the officers and men rather than send them packing unemployed into the streets and wilds where the will pick up their un divulged cashes of weapons and explosives and wait to use them to good effect. Fortunately or unfortunately we in the US keep excellent records with the FBI and ATF and Explosives regulatory agencies that if our government capitulated to a domestic or foreign enemy or a cabal of both as it usually is then they would gladly render the lists to save their (and families) skins. Iraqi muslims have quite substantial personal protection rights for heads of families in fact similar to the swiss and often with koran as a basis for the disarming of other populations muslim fathers must be armed preferably with a with a military grade weapon like and AK or Draganov. In Washington DC even the registered weapons, shotguns and muzzle loaders must be disassembled. We as a citizenry as long as the media conveys the perception that we will be "taken care of" we are likely to release our freedoms with a wimper rather than a sustained roar. Hopefully we will not face this situation in our life times but as a people we are definitely not ready for it.

[Stu-6]

I used the Red Dawn example as a half joke about why we should think carefully about any occupation of Iraq 4 years ago. Maybe if more people had been 10 years old at that time, and after seeing that movie planing for how they would help defeat the Russians, we wouldn't be where we are.

[Stu-6]

I just turned on the TV and guess what is on . . .

[Culpeper]

"Red Dawn" is a cross-section of the Cold War during the early 1980s and what was going on in Central America. There is nothing in the screenplay of "Red Dawn" that reminds me that the current fight in Iraq boils down to the Sunni decision following four caliphs and the Shiites abiding to only the foundations laid by the Prophet himself. That Islam had restraints against tyranny that have given way to petty dictators having more power than the mightiest of Sultans. Our involvement is just a pimple on an elephant's ass compared to the history of the entire region. Some people would like to think that we are like the Mongols running across the Nation of Islam, that wages is not income, and only gold is money. Islam is the big picture within certain borders that mean nothing. Our beef is just a slice of their problem. Never in the history of Islam has anything ever been settled. At least we have the Supreme Court. And with that we have, "In God We Trust" still on our coins. And we are not going around killing each other despite everything.

RED DAWN

Prologue/Opening Narration: Soviet Union suffers worst wheat harvest in 55 years... Labor and food riots in Poland. Soviet troops invade... Cuba and Nicaragua reach troop strength goals of 500,000. El Salvador and Honduras fall... Greens Party gains control of West German Parliament. Demands withdrawal of nuclear weapons from European soil... Mexico plunged into revolution... NATO dissolves. United States stands alone.

Jed Eckert: My family would want me to stay alive. Your family would want you to stay alive. You think you're so smart, man, but you're just a bunch of scared kids.

Col. Strelnikov: [he lectures the Russo-Cuban Army about what must be done regarding the Wolverines] From this moment on... There will be no further reprisals against civilians. This was stupid. Impotence. Comrades... If a fox stole your chickens... Would you slaughter your pig because he saw the fox? No. You would hunt the fox... You would find where it lives and destroy it! And how do we do this? Become a fox.

Theodore Roosevelt: [inscription on a bronze statue in front of Calumet High School] "Far better it is to dare mighty things, than to take rank with those poor, timid spirits who know neither victory nor defeat."

Colonel Ernesto Bella: [writing a letter to his family back home] I can't remember what it was to be warm. It seems a thousand years since I was a small boy in the sun. How did I come to this high, desolate place where there is nothing but loneliness? So much is lost. I want to look into your eyes and forget. It all seems so far away: a warm house where my shadow never falls; your long, black hair in my hands. There is no more revolution, only you to come back to. I will post my resignation.

[tequila]

It seems so long ago, but the operation that caught Saddam Hussein was labeled "Operation Red Dawn." I had a moment of cognitive dissonance just like Abu Buckwheat.

Matt Eckert: *Tell me what's the difference between us and them!*
Jed Eckert: Because WE *LIVE* HERE!

[Doug Ollivant]

This is a surprisingly powerful mantra for the partisan. This echoes the quote attributed to Joan of Arc at her Inquisition, "If God loves or hates the English, I do not know. I only know that they must be thrown out of France."

Doug

[SteveMetz]

I've noticed recently that AMC has been replaying the classic eighties film "Red Dawn" directed by John Milius (the original screewriter for "Apocalypse Now.") The movie imagines America being conquered by the Soviets with the help of the Cubans. Most of the movie follows a rugged band of teenage American insurgents in Colorado. As I watched the film I was struck by how applicable it is to Iraq...the question I kept coming back to is this: If some foreign power came and occupied your land, killed your brother, incarcerated your father, would you take up arms against him? The answer is, of course you would.

At first when I first saw the movie on tv again, I just laughed. It's really a boyhood fantasy flick about turning the local boy scout troop into a guerilla band. The dialogue is really bad at times. But the more I thought about it, the idea of simply sympathizing with many of the nationalist Iraqi (non-AQI & Salafist types) insurgents we've been fighting over there took on more valence.

Ten years ago, "Red Dawn" was just another bad eighties movie. Now I'm starting to think that it's one of the most trenchant films for Americans to watch to understand their enemy because there's no intervening cultural static. We see Americans doing what many Iraq insurgents are doing: attacking enemy armor columns, watching the enemy shoot himself in the foot through his cultural arrogance, growing increasingly frustrated and turning to torture as his losses mount.

Obviously, the issues aren't this simple. Iraq isn't 1980s America. We're not the Soviets. But in my two trips to Iraq, I've found myself wondering what kind of person would become an insurgent. I came to the conclusion that I'm exactly the kind of person that would.

I've tried to make a related argument to explain Iraq. People will say, "But we've built X number of schools and Y number of clinics..."

I reply: Imagine that somehow AQ was able to take over the United States and begin transforming it into an Islamic state. If they fixed the potholes in our roads and improved our schools, would that make it acceptable?

It's so difficult for anyone, especially Americans, to see themselves through the eyes of others.

[Tom Odom]

I've tried to make a related argument to explain Iraq. People will say, "But we've built X number of schools and Y number of clinics..."

I reply: Imagine that somehow AQ was able to take over the United States and begin transforming it into an Islamic state. If they fixed the potholes in our roads and improved our schools, would that make it acceptable?

It's so difficult for anyone, especially Americans, to see themselves through the eyes of others.

Amen, Steve!

Thanks for posting on here of late. For the greater audience, in a time long ago (the mid-80s) Steve was kind enough to serve as a reader on CPT Odom's research paper on the 1964 Congo Crisis.

The analogy to AQ in America fixing potholes is on the mark. I had a flashback yesterday (hearing about the bridge bombings in Iraq) concerning Egyptians trying to undertand Americans; when my former wife was AID in Egypt I used to routinely talk to the various Egyptians she sent to the US for courses and lesser boondoggles. The standard tour always included Disney World because if she didn't include it, the Egyptians filed a complaint. They just really had a thing for Mickey Mouse, I guess. But one question they always asked stuck with me: "how come you don't guard your bridges?" The issue sounds silly but consider as a culture built around the Nile, bridges are a both a rarity and a treasure. They were always shocked that so many bridges existed and that we did not guard them.

Best regards

Tom

[Granite_State]

I've tried to make a related argument to explain Iraq. People will say, "But we've built X number of schools and Y number of clinics..."

I reply: Imagine that somehow AQ was able to take over the United States and begin transforming it into an Islamic state. If they fixed the potholes in our roads and improved our schools, would that make it acceptable?

It's so difficult for anyone, especially Americans, to see themselves through the eyes of others.

Couldn't agree more. Though I don't necessarily agree with his politics, Bill Lind makes a decent point about the "Brave New World" of globalized materialism and how traditional Muslims (among others) react to that.

Iraqi "ungratefulness" made the most sense to me a couple of months ago, when I read Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London. Towards the end he has a story about how he and some other homeless men were fed by a Christian church outside London, then told to sit through a service in return. Their response was to hoot and holler, disrupting the service and daring the poor worshipers below to attempt to toss them out. Seemed to tell me more about Iraq than thousands of other words I've read on the subject.

[SteveMetz]

Amen, Steve!

Thanks for posting on here of late. For the greater audience, in a time long ago (the mid-80s) Steve was kind enough to serve as a reader on CPT Odom's research paper on the 1964 Congo Crisis.

"On 24 November 1964, dawn broke at its usual time over the central African city of Stanleyville. The routine sunrise, however, did not presage another typical day for the old colonial trade center..."

http://render2.snapfish.com/render2/.../of=50,377,442

[SteveMetz]

Couldn't agree more. Though I don't necessarily agree with his politics, Bill Lind makes a decent point about the "Brave New World" of globalized materialism and how traditional Muslims (among others) react to that.

Iraqi "ungratefulness" made the most sense to me a couple of months ago, when I read Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London. Towards the end he has a story about how he and some other homeless men were fed by a Christian church outside London, then told to sit through a service in return. Their response was to hoot and holler, disrupting the service and daring the poor worshipers below to attempt to toss them out. Seemed to tell me more about Iraq than thousands of other words I've read on the subject.

Americans forget how prickly we were--we threw out occupiers who shared our culture and religion over the price of tea!

[Culpeper]

America played a large role in bringing progress to the Middle East. Made many governments and certain individuals very wealthy, including the bin Laden family. In return for such good will we over empathize with their dogma to a fault. So much so that we are more willing to discuss what we don't understand about them and avoid what they have done as of late. It is very surprising to see so many people so surprised at the way Muslims behave as if it is a shortcoming of our own because we can't feel for them. Just about every amendment to our constitution is for the benefit of the individual. And yet we so readily accuse ourselves of being unable to perceive the culture of others. Empathy is one thing. Sympathy is entirely different. But one surely leads to the latter when we are not careful. We may find ourselves with having to choose between conversion, death, or enslavement. Only because we disagree whether a pothole is worth repairing in the long run. We are quick to point out the virtues of the other man's culture and our lack of empathy but hesitant to discuss in even greater detail the threat of the other man's culture, dogma, and ideology on our own culture. I realize that empathizing is an important element in planning against a threatening culture, dogma, or ideology but there is a time where killing that idea is just as much or even more important. Over rationalizing other cultures by finding fault with our own is a self-defeating defense mechanism. Rationalizing on how to counter a threat from another culture based on an understanding of that culture is enough. Especially, when that culture's ultimate goal is your demise, that the Quran is a living document in the most dangerous of hands, and it is a sin of said culture/religion/law to question such decisions made as a result.

[VinceC]

America played a large role in bringing progress to the Middle East. Made many governments and certain individuals very wealthy, including the bin Laden family. In return for such good will we over empathize with their dogma to a fault. So much so that we are more willing to discuss what we don't understand about them and avoid what they have done as of late. It is very surprising to see so many people so surprised at the way Muslims behave as if it is a shortcoming of our own because we can't feel for them. Just about every amendment to our constitution is for the benefit of the individual. And yet we so readily accuse ourselves of being unable to perceive the culture of others.

There are a few points of discussion here:

1. Contributing to the wealth of certain governments and individuals has not made the United States popular in the eyes of many people. Concentrated wealth is one of the problems in many areas of the world, not just the Middle East. Citizens aren't fools. When they see conspicuous wealth while their children are living in destitution, they respect neither those with wealth nor those who enabled that wealth.

2. People in other nations are critical of U.S. motives when the United States is perceived to be choosing sides in sectarian disputes and conflicts. For a home-grown example, recall what happened when Osama bin Laden in October 2004 issued a statement perceived to favor John Kerry over George Bush in the U.S. presidential election. That was not welcomed by either political party.

3. The U.S. Constitutional emphasis on individual rights and freedoms is part of our cultural norm. It is is an ideal that the United States has offered to the world since the 1770s, but it is not universally shared. It was very interesting to read General Odierno's new Counter-Insurgency guidance, recdently posted on the Small Wars Journal Blog and elsewhere. Item 2 says to "Give the People Justice and Honor." That is what they value most in their cultural context. The United States values personal rights and freedom. Iraqis value justice and honor. This is a powerful insight on the part of the U.S. and Coalition authorities. Imagine, again, a scenerio in which an occupying power arrived in the United States and operated by placing the greatest emphasis on its own values of justice and honor while downplaying individual rights and freedoms.

[Culpeper]

That is utterly ridiculous to assume or limit your response that our culture is limited to personal rights and freedom that exclude justice and honor. Your post is a perfect example of the point I attempted to make. We may agree to disagree but you give a perfect example. Like I stated, an understanding of a threatening culture is enough in a hostile situation. Otherwise, you are going talk and think your way into not only empathizing but sympathizing as well. It can even lead to even further destructive behavior like the LtCol that gave his cellphone to prisoners so they can make personal phone calls. Now, he faces charges that have a capital punishment tag attached to it. The message behind the movie, "Apocalypse Now" is often lost due to the fantastic action and cinematography. We have all seen the movie. Has anyone payed close attention to the ideology of Colonel Kurtz in the storyline? I see the beginning of some of the same type of dissertation coursing through a lot of threads. Interesting.

[jastay3]

Understanding your enemies point of view is all very well. However it has it's limits. You could just as easily watch Red Dawn and think,"What would we think if we were bringing the wonders of Soviet Society into a country and the ungrateful little brats just shot at us and then ran away and pretended to be civillians...".
Or you can think, "How would you feel if newcomers came in, invited you to be their allies. And then just up and left-leaving you to be hosed".
Oh wait, I can guess that because in my city there are a number of Hmong tribesmen. And they live in Oregon. And they don't live in Indochina.
Or you can ask, "What would you think if you were afraid that the most influential people in your country were to busy feeling guilty to take their responsibilities seriously."
Oh wait...
Empathizing with your enemy is fine. I can empathise with my country's past enemies. I can even empathise with the Germans which by the way few seem to be able to do now(Is that shocking? Consider what it was like having your cities burned above you and waiting for the Russians to come...closer...closer. And all the while wondering if The Rumors were true).
But empathizing with the Germans hardly means I don't think their regime had to be destroyed.
And oh yes, they had their own "boy scouts" disappearing into the woods to fight the invaders. Just like Red Dawn.

[Rifleman]

Americans forget how prickly we were--we threw out occupiers who shared our culture and religion over the price of tea!

Kinda sorta.

Likely, most of my ancestors would have said no to sharing the same culture as the British. After about a hundred years, more or less, in Ulster they evidently felt that they were not Scottish enough to be Scottish, Irish enough to be Irish, or British enough to be British, so they decided to become Americans. Blame good King James I for that one.

Okay, so economics in 18th Century Ulster probably had something to do with emigrating too. Why spoil a nice thought?