Red Dawn

Last week I watched a rerun of a 1984 movie called ‘Red Dawn’. Starring in this “patriotic” little movie were such notables as Patrick Swayze, Charlie Sheen, Lea Thompson, Powers Boothe and Harry Dean Stanton. It was a fairly decent little time waster with a good cast.

The plot line centers on the invasion and occupation of the American mid-west by Cuban and Soviet troops. A small group of teenagers flee to the foothills of the Rockies and take up arms against the occupying forces, to defend their town and their country. This small band of “partisans” ambushes Soviet convoys, conducts raids against their oppressors and generally make life miserable for the foreign invaders.

These insurgents also kill and main a fair share of the enemy. And, it is not just the enemy who suffers from the actions of the “Wolverines” as they call themselves. Their families and friends are targeted by soldiers of the invading army, hoping to stem the tide of the insurrection. Townspeople are detained without reason, and even executed by the invaders.

Some townspeople collaborate with the enemy, in an effort to make their lives a little bit better. These people are depicted as the “bad guys”, willing to sacrifice truth, justice and the American way, to escape the hardship of the occupation. There’s even a scene where the character played by Patrick Swayze executes a captured Russian soldier but can’t bring himself to shoot a childhood friend who the Wolverines find to be a collaborator. So someone else in the group does it for him.

In the United States, the movie is seen as the triumph of the American will to fight off foreign armies who wish to impose a foreign culture and a foreign form of government on the people of the United States.

Unless you’ve been in hibernation or a state of suspended animation for the past five years, you already know where I’m going with this.

About five years ago, the Bush administration twisted and distorted the facts to justify the US invasion of Iraq. They lied about weapons of mass destruction, Iraqi links with al Queda, Iraqi participation in the attacks of 911 and most of the other reasons they gave for invading a sovereign nation.

When their reasons for invasion were shown to be lies, they pointed to the fact that Saddam Hussein and his regime had been toppled and asked, “Aren’t Iraqis better off now than they were under Saddam?” A good many people would be likely to respond in the negative, given the current situation in Iraq.

And, just like the perpetual war in Orwell’s “1984”, the enemy keeps changing. A few years back, the US was supporting Saddam, providing arms and ammunition, including biological weapons, to kill Iranians. Then Bush decided that Iraq needed a “regime change”. The Sunni were the enemy at the start of the war, now they’re being paid $10.00 a day by the US to kill al Queda. The terrorist group Al Queda didn’t exist in Iraq prior to the US invasion.

And, the beat goes on; first the insurgents were Saddam loyalists, then Sunni tribesmen, then Al Queda, then Shia militias and now Iranian sympathizers. Never are the “insurgents” simply Iraqi.

Why is it that Americans did not foresee Iraqi resistance to the invasion and occupation of their homeland? Was it really so hard to accept the fact that some Iraqis might love their country as much as Americans love theirs? Did they honestly believe that Iraqis lacked the courage or will to fight an invading army in defense of their country?

In the movie version of Red Dawn, the insurgents were portrayed as good guys; clean cut American youths, prepared to die for their country. In the Iraqi version of Red Dawn, the insurgents are the bad guys; ungrateful, anti-American fanatics, obstinately objecting to America’s “war of liberation”. Uh-huh.

New word for the day: hyp·o·crite (hip-o-krit) n.
To play a part, pretend
A person who professes beliefs and opinions that he or she does not hold in order to conceal his or her real feelings or motives.