Can they win?
Our fearless soldiers face such overwhelming odds. That AK-47 is scratching the M1A2’s paint up! OH THE HUMANITY!
You may have missed it, but there’s actually a lot more harm being done to US forces than scratched paint on their M1A2s.
If they pull something off similar to “Black Hawk Down,” it could be great. But Harrison Ford, much as I’ve often really liked him as an actor, is (to me) a sign of a big Hollywood empty-headed flick.
I know, but… it’s really a stretch to paint yourself as the underdog here. No, scratch that - it’s impossible. The Iraqis are outnumbered, outgunned, with no air support. From the Arab point of view, the resistance is heroic - if not in goal then in what they’re actually accomplishing - using scrap to fight the most modern army in the world.
Black Hawk Down worked well as a moral/cautionary tale, or as a history of screwups.
Fallujah, when you look at the casualty ratios or the whole accomplishment, is a steamrolling massacre. Yeah, being kicked out of there the first time sucked, but remember - US forces chose to withdraw. They withdrew, surrounded the city, brought in an overwhelming force and systematically moved from block to block, wiping out the insurgents. They had a plan how to deal with everything - including the sacred mosques and other political considerations - and they executed it.
The US perspective is that oh no, maybe 100 soldiers or whatever died, but if you look at it in the long view, it will be seen as an extremely clean and efficient operation. Humane, as well.
From a conqueror’s perspective, it would have been a lot easier to do the following:
- Withdraw when the insurgency took hold.
- Surround the city, establish complete surveillance, build your own forces up for an attack.
- Permit the insurgents to trickle in, but not out of the city. You want as many of them there as possible. Heck, you even give them food as “humanitarian aid”. You want them there.
- Once your attack preparations are ready, you roll forward and engage - carefully, cautiously. They man their positions, get ready, fight a little bit…
- And from high on overhead, a gaggle of B-52s or B-1s or whatever else carries 50 tons of bombs, levels the fucking city. And again. Then they come a third time, with the heaviest bombs they can carry, just in case there are survivors underneath the rubble or in the sewers.
That, my friend, is the smart approach to winning the battle. That would be the Russian approach, that would have been the American approach in World War II.
You say it’d raise an outcry among the Arabs. You’re damn right. But they’d do nothing about it. If they tried, you’d repeat the feat once or twice and sheer terror would keep them in line.
Everyone here likes to think that terror doesn’t work, that you keep pushing people and they’ll break. I’m sorry, but Saddam Hussein, Oliver Cromwell, Napoleon Bonaparte and every Russian Czar since Ivan IV has proven you wrong. Police states DO work. That’s why they keep springing up over and over.
When I first say this thread, I seriously thought it was an Indiana Jones film.
I eagerly await Ford’s stirring speech toward the film’s end expousing the benefits of democracy and self-determination.
“Get off my plane!”
- Alan
“Get out of my city!”
<Full street of Fallujah citizens start applauding as a line of captured and chained insurgents are led past them>
Of course police states work. That’s not the issue. The issue is that behaving like a police state is reckless and damaging when the perpetrator claims to be a democracy. If you beat your enemy by becoming him, what have you gained exactly?
An appropriate title would be Indiana Jones and the Next Crusade, no?
So you believe that we should have completely liberal laws in Iraq?
You don’t think this might lead to some chance of minor disorder?
So you believe that we should have completely liberal laws in Iraq?
You don’t think this might lead to some chance of minor disorder?[/quote]
WOOPWOOPWOOP P&R Derail Alert!
So you believe that we should have completely liberal laws in Iraq?
You don’t think this might lead to some chance of minor disorder?[/quote]
WOOPWOOPWOOP P&R Derail Alert![/quote]
Good catch.
We’ll stop the train here before it becomes a trainwreck!
Who knows…maybe It will be Indiana in Iraq.
-Assaf
Personally, I’m looking forward to seeing how Iraq filters into popular culture like movies and TV. I have a hard time imagining it’ll take a “rah rah” pro-invasion stance, however.
It is kind of goofy imagining Harrison Ford in an Iraq war movie, but the Air Force One comparisons probably aren’t relevant. That was a movie from a whole other pre-9/11 national consciousness.
BTW, there’s also a Steven Bochco production about the war in Iraq. It’s in development for FX. It’s called Over There.
-Tom
You have a “hard time believing” that a movie called The Battle for Fallujah, which starts when four US contractors are torn to pieces by an Iraqi mob and their bodies then burned and dragged through the streets, will be be rah-rah pro-invasion? Huh? But hey, I suppose the movie could show the positive side of torching corpses and dancing around the blackened remains…
Brett- Have you ever seen The Green Berets? Compare to, say, Black Hawk Down.
The movie will almost certainly try to divorce itself from making any larger message about the war.
This is the guy Harrison Ford will be playing. I’ll bet Mrs. Mattis thinks it’s an upgrade.
Well, this is going to be one incomprehensible film. “They dragged some soldiers thorugh the streets, and twice now we’ve ‘cleaned out the city’; they’ll probably come right back.” An inspirational tale.