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The Price of Military Tech Assistance In Movies
derekmead writes "Last week at Camp David, President Obama met up with fellow NATO leaders to discuss the road ahead in Afghanistan. Although no one there used the language of defeat, the implicit message was clear: the war has gone nowhere in the past few years and it's time to start packing up. Meanwhile, what raked in $25.5 million at the box office? Battleship. And who provided director Peter Berg with the war technology that beats the aliens? The U.S. military. He's not the only one: the past few years have seen an explosion of high-profile cooperation between the armed forces and the movie industry. If the most powerful armed force in history isn't winning in reality, it certainly is on the big screen. And like so many problematic aspects of late capitalism, the military-Hollywood complex has a grimly understandable logic."
Matthew Alford, film researcher and author of Reel Power: Hollywood Cinema and American Supremacy, is even harsher in his critique. âoeThe Pentagon has a manual. Basically, it will only provide full cooperation to propaganda pieces,â he said in an interview.
Is this against the law?
Against the law? If anything it should be the law. Why should the military spend its time and money on projects which aren't relevant to recruitment or combat/training?
Do editors here do any proofreading at all, whatsoever? Irrelevant statements, useless commentary, and almost no coherant point of the headline.
No wonder people are leaving this site in droves. Slashdot = the myspace of tech sites.
Skipping over the editorializing in the summary, I would like to point out that the Military using Hollywood for promotion is not a recent occurence.
It should be noted that Abbot and Costello's "Buck Privates" was used to help spur enlistment.
As was "The Green Berets".
As was "Top Gun".
As was a number of other films (these three jump out at me as being some of the best examples).
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
The USA spends close to a million dollars per soldier per year. The enemy has to spend maybe 5% of that per "enemy combatant" at most. Probably a lot less. To field a force that would be numerically equal to our forces would cost them maybe $50 million. They'd need a lot more than that to defeat us in battles, because our side is better armed. But this is not about battles. There have been very few battles. In this kind of war, the resistance avoids direct confrontations and chooses to strike where and when its forces can do the most damage to the stronger side -- or just make them look ineffective. Most of the American forces are busy trying to protect every place where the enemy might strike. It's extremely inefficient. So the Taliban only needs a small fraction of our forces to keep the Americans busy -- and going broke.
Basically, this kind of war is not winnable in a traditional sense. The resistance can carry on with a small number of soldiers and on a shoestring budget almost indefinitely.
That's not to say that guerilla forces can't be defeated. They can be, if the populace cooperates with the central government to deny them aid, deny them new soldiers and help ferret them out -- and if the resistance doesn't have cooperative govenrments across the border.
That's not the situation in Afghanistan, so it's highly questionable whether we can win at any cost.
It IS relevant to recruitment. It basically started with Top Gun in the 80's years ago when they realised the idealised portrayal of going to war led to a sharp increase in recruitment.
It was so successful that recruiters even had booths set up outside the cinema to catch these people.
http://articles.latimes.com/1986-07-05/entertainment/ca-20403_1_top-gun
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
I'm typing this right now, and sending to a web server on the Internet, a computer network which only exists because the US taxpayer financed the Pentagon, who in turn gave the money to military contractors like BBN, SRI and so forth.
That's what it is, and that's how it had to be. It's how Magnitogorsk was built in the USSR, how Volkswagen and the Autobahn were created in Germany, and how things like this happen here in the US and how they had to happen. There's some kind of emperor's new clothes things where people can't say the decades long creation of Internet was financed by the taxpayer via the government. I have heard so many US politicians talk about how the Internet was created by the "free market" (whatever that means), capitalism, private enterprise and so forth and how it shows the innovation that can come from that. Of course, we all know better, or at least those of us old enough to have owned 300 baud modems back in the early 1980s know that.
While we hear from the news commissars and politicians of how broke the US is, with a huge deficit, and how we have to cut back, notice how a massive military bill just sailed through Congress. Americans have to tighten their belt, and go with less garbage pickups, or shorter library hours, and that sort of thing, but there's plenty of money for military bases in Djibouti and Bulgaria and Kyrgyzstan. The US is spending a ton of money to ramp up the US military presence in the Pacific (shades of the late 1930s), on a new class of aircraft carriers and so forth. Meanwhile, all of this heavy duty equipment is completely useless against small cells of anti-imperial Arab nationalists that are willing to go on suicide missions.
It's worth noting that homosexual agenda recruiters also set up booths outside the cinema to catch men who had questions about their sexuality after that shirtless Tom Cruise volleyball scene.
Yes, I don't see any problem with their script requirements. Why should the American military help someone portray them in a light that they don't want to be portrayed? I would think that goes for any person or entity.
So, anything that doesn't kill 30,000 people is OK? That's an interesting metric.
Some other bits:
- We get have an opinion on how our tax dollars are spent. That's called being a citizen.
- Civilian deaths in Iraq are likely greater than 100K, so something is off with your math.
This is bullshit. In real drone strikes, there is no guarantee that only "terrorists" are the victims. All the press reporting in the US takes the military at their word, and casualties are never identified as "collateral damage", i.e. innocent bystanders.
It's a real war, and there are always non-combatants who are killed and injured. Pretending this never happens may be good to keep support up at home, but it is a damned lie. Honesty is a better policy in the long run.
One of the reasons that Pakistan is not letting NATO resupply convoys go through it's territory is because of the toll taken by drone strikes. It is a huge issue with the Pakistan population. By not admitting to any civilian casualties in the US press, there can be no meaningful debate about how our policy is effecting US standing in the Middle East.
Personally, I think that the Pakistan government is not worth spit as an ally, and they are directly supporting our enemies. We would be better off if we cut most military aid because of their backstabbing behavior. Even so, the practical, ethical and political effects of our use of drones should be much more publicly debated, rather then being swept under the rub by what is effectively military propaganda.
Why is Snark Required?
More people die on the highways in the US each year than have died or been injured in combat in both wars, and the "collateral damage" isn't too far beyond that number either.
So the more people die in accidents in a country the more murders that country is allowed to commit? In other words what you're saying is that if the roads in Nazi Germany were more dangerous that'd make the Holocaust ok. That is not how it works. If I kicked you in the balls and explained it's fine because that happens to people everyday would you accept the excuse or try to beat me up for kicking you in the balls?
(Accidental) Road deaths in the US: ~30k/year
Civilians murdered in Iraq: >100k (total)
So you're wrong. More people died in the Iraq war (which, by the way, would be very easy to prevent by not invading it) than die per year in road accidents in the US (road accidents are only preventable to a degree (unless you don't use roads, obviously)).
You may be right. However, the more important issues are how the larger audience interprets it and how it affects their perceptions of reality. Satire is a dangerous tool when used on the uncritical.
In other words what you're saying is that if the roads in Nazi Germany were more dangerous that'd make the Holocaust ok.
Wait... did you just invoke Godwin's Law AND make a car analogy in the same post? Is this a definition of a perfect /. post???
The song "Yvan Eht Nioj" had a similar problem I heard.
Just a suggestion, but stop fucking up peoples shit around the world and people wont have a grudge against you and you wont have to intimidate people.
Contrary to popular opinion in the US, the reason for extremists from the middle east and areas of asia isn't because "they hate freedom", its because US foreign policy over the past 70 years has been screwing over whole populations of people in order to have 'friendly governments' available to them. If these governments were not willing to do anything the US wanted, a new government was installed by any means necessary. Generally speaking, if you surpress a population for that length of time, you'll have a backlash. I don't know if your politicians are either grossly ignorant of these basic facts or they are simply misleading the population, but the US isn't known around the world for freedom and democracy, they are known for oppression and tyranny. So tell me, if you knew a country known for oppression and tyranny, what would you do? Oh yeah, we've already seen that, you'd bomb the fuck out of them, be damned how many civilians you kill until "democrats" crawl out of the rubble and promise to be good little boys and girls. I swear, how people don't see the cause and effect in all this is beyond me...
There is no -1 disagree
Your facts are not in order.
Pakistan is blockading NATO due to an air strike that kill two dozen Pakistani soldiers at a border outpost. The Pakistanis reportedly made the unfortunate "mistake" of firing at US and Afghan commandos which they sometimes do when they forget which side they are supporting. Pakistan is demanding an apology for the incident, and is also using it as an excuse to try to jack up the transit fee from $200 to $5,000 per truck.
The overwhelming majority of non-combatants being killed in Afghanistan are being killed by road-side bombs placed by . . . guess who. . . the Taliban. The Taliban also visit murder and massacre on the various tribes and villages. Unlike NATO, the Taliban deliberately targets innocent non-combatants.
As to drone strikes . . .
Pakistan Says Drone Strikes Have Been Effective
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
- Civilian deaths in Iraq are likely greater than 100K, so something is off with your math.
The vast majority of which were killed by terrorists and insurgents who did things like explode car bombs in busy markets, and use truck bombs to level entire villages.
If Saddam had stayed in power and killed at his long term average, there would probably have been 50-100% more dead than there were. Saddam is out of power now, and the terrorist and insurgent violence is down by something like 90%. US combat forces are out of Iraq. Iraq is a functioning, if troubled, democracy. And now the Iraqis are rebuilding, putting up schools and libraries instead of another batch of enormous palaces for Saddam.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
All the press reporting in the US takes the military at their word, and casualties are never identified as "collateral damage", i.e. innocent bystanders.
I don't believe that to be true, I've head of many admissions from the pentagon that they have caused collateral damage. Sure they sometimes seem to hem and haw a little, but claiming what you do is just another form of propaganda.
The force that blew the Big Bang continues to accelerate.
I think that scene in Iron Man was demonstrating his optical tracking system, letting him rapidly designate as targets the people who were pointing guns at other people's heads. With a human in the driver's seat, the indicators would be pretty obvious.
All the press reporting in the US takes the military at their word, and casualties are never identified as "collateral damage", i.e. innocent bystanders.
That's becuase in the real world, people like you don't understand the definition of "collateral damage" nor do they seem to understand that war is hell; and certainly not fair.
If you are within a certain proximity of someone you are legally considered a sympathiser and therefore, a legitimate kill. A massive number of legitimate kills are later claimed to be "innocent civilians." In all of these conflicts, where possible, they leave the bodies by take all the weapons. They then claim "innocent civilians" were murdered and small minded idiots everywhere believe them. Now then, that is not say to innocent people don't die. A lot of innocent people have died and will continue to die in any and all future conflicts. They have died in every war known to mankind. But this is also why the military's numbers never match everyone else's numbers. The truth is, the truth is somewhere in between.
I can't tell you how many documentaries I've watched or how many armed forces I've spoken too who all tell the same stories. Someone starts shooting at them. They take out the enemy - frequently with optics; thusly confirming it was a combatant. When they arrive their weapons are gone and all the locals insist they were "innocent civilians" who never harmed anyone. The military's count is correct. Then bleeding heart idiots come in and interview people and find the bodies had no weapons. They declare the military murdered people. Their count is incorrect and woefully over-inflated; even if they have good intentions.
Bigger problems come from the use of bombs. All too frequently, there actually are "innocent civilians", who were forced under threat of murder to stay with the bad guys. They are there in case they are attacked, such that THEY can murder them and claim the military is murdering "innocent civilians". Of course, should a bomb be dropped, or if they are attacked, "innocent civilians" are killed. The problem is, the military dropped the bomb, but they didn't kill them. Also, when attacked, frequently the "innocent civilians" are actually killed by scum - or they are forced to pick up weapons and are killed by the military.
The deal is, its never anywhere as cut and dry as so many ignorant, bleeding heart suckers like to depict. The fact is, the "innocent civilians" counts are factually, way, way, way over blown. Secondly, that number does not clearly indicate who actually killed them or what the situation was. The fact is, once they pick up a weapon or become part of their entourage, they are no longer "innocent" - legally. And all this ignores the fact that in many cases, the "innocent civilian" deaths are frequently lower than before the top fell. Which means, according to a lot of these agencies, "innocent civilians" deaths are okay so long as the US military is not involved.
Long story short, while we know the military's count is too low, its far, far, far more accurate than most accounts of "innocent civilian"" deaths - by far. The truth is, the actual numbers are somewhere in between - and likely closer to the military's than you think.