'Rules' of Engagement' Fiction Movie Became Great Analogy To Greater Reality
Sorting through old VHS movies, I came across Rules of Engagement starring Samuel L. Jackson, Tommy Lee Jones and Ben Kingsley made arguably at the peak of their careers in the year 2000.
Watching the movie again a few things struck me, (even though a work of fiction) especially the analogy so stark to how years of real life relations between North America's, relations and Arab Islamic nations panned out.
To put it bluntly in terms of Mr. Carlson, of WKRP sitcom fame, only disingenuously so, in the case of American and Canadian governments and MSM, 'As God is our witness, we thought Muslims don't lie.'
First of all, you have what you really train soldiers to do, and wish of them in this case, Jackson shooting a POW to get information from the POWs superior, imperative to the lives and well-being and the rest of his troop including Tommy Lee Jones.
No one would have been killed, (in fact, the communist colonel is set free as per Jackson's 'word') had they been forth- coming with the information and demanded communication from the captured communist leader to his troop... to leave the scene of the massacre on the marines.
War has it's own rules sometimes despite best intentions of United Nations Conventions or Queensbury rules..and War also can, and has had a certain honor or different set of rules among enemies, as seen late in the movie when the same communist colonel, honestly 'responds' (over offering up) that he would have done the same, as Jackson (shoot a POW to get critical information to save his men) had the situation been reversed. Jackson wasn't asking of the prisoners the impossible as in what couldn't be complied with or produced, nor was he working in the future hypothetical.
Jackson prevented a complete massacre while not asking the enemy to give up their own men to a massacre at Jackson's hand. The only analogy in this part being that the liberal MSM is often to quick to put out, incomplete information of massaged propaganda against the truth of the matter, as more aptly drawn out at the later questioning of the colonel, by Tommy Lee, as Jackson's hapless and reluctant defense attorney.
Today's anti-military MSM (unless their establishment, leftist leader decides the same or more severe, military actions are necessary) would only fixate as the prosecution did, on the 'murdering' of an unarmed POW. There is more to write here, but don't want to dwell on this aspect.
The politicians only concerned with the optics of the situation, not to the extent of how bad the nation looks but how bad they as individuals and and their party looks, to the extent that they would have an innocent soldier put in prison for the rest of his life to save their rear-ends.
In fact, the rule of thumb for North American nations to engage in war would seem to have nothing to do with 'cause', just wars, or oil, for that matter, but how well it will play out politically for the commanders and chiefs. This is exactly what the modern world has been reduced to.
The MSM in the story creates illusions as they so often do now that fit their ideology no matter the facts. Jackson has media whipped up mobs tormenting him when he is seen in public.
Political underlings are told to buckle under and back up the political party and its individuals as seen when Kingsley and his wife are told to drop the truth that Jackson saved their lives because they need Jackson to come across as a mad killer not as a hero. Threatened with being dismissed from his appointed ambassador gig, both Kingsley and his wife back up the phony story even though Jackson saved them and their young son.
Of course, the worst lie is the politically correct take on Islam, Muslims and the Koran, North America adopted, playing the backward hick, lagging in the knowledge, and more years experience, European and other nations had with Islam, and increasingly their fill of it. Real actual brain washing methods used on their youth, and the real cruelty Muslim men who are actually true to the Koran inflict commonly on their wives and daughters is not commonly dispersed knowledge but of honest translation, of the Koran.
Politicians, the MSM, and socialist academia obsessed with a number of various nefarious ways of dismantling free societies at whatever the costs, now know the 'score' if they didn't before, but can't do much about it now, for having erred so wrongly to have actually wasted thousands of human lives that they neither know how to put the lid back on the whole fiasco nor, can they possibly 'afford' admitting how wrong they actually were. It would be like going back to Vietnam under the heading, gee we almost won it, when we decided to pack it in. And don't think all the Vietnam peasants like the Chinese imprisoned peasants wouldn't want that badly.
If you follow the news wire out of all Islamic Arab nations as Blazing Cat Fur for one, does, there are daily numerous atrocities committed against Christians, Muslim women and girls, and all sorts of other blasphemers, on a daily basis... daily atrocities you wouldn't see on a monthly basis committed in North America. All these North American Muslims except a relative few North American converts only came from these same nations of Islam. They own it! And they don't ever apologize for it,,, for various reasons...none of them good.
Hitler ingratiated himself to a whole nation, as evil as he was. Same thing... Italy, Japan, communist nations aplenty, and South American dictators. These were evil empires, evil people, evil humanist ideologies that won over whole nations. What makes modern free nations assume they are immune from any of the same, under any name, including a phony 'religion'? They sure as Hell are not too smart for anything, never mind too smart to be fooled. God always smacks down the proud with the stupid stick, all but they can see, doesn't He.
I'm not saying all Muslims are evil but 'giving' the backward culture of Islam new modern characteristics, of a 'peace and love religion' when it suits their purpose, to the same name of Islam based on evil and tribal bullying, when it suited and still suits their purposes is dead wrong.
Increasingly, Islam is a culture to be ashamed of by its own members and prisoners, not something to be exalted by North America.
There was so much to be drawn from the movie to apply to real life, it would take pages to go through it.
The writer of this movie didn't have to be a prophet to script this movie. The fictional characters only needed to match the tendencies of the real life good guy players, and the real life bad guy players...and twelve years later, nothing has changed.
At the conclusion of the fictional movie, 'Rules of Engagement' the truth won out despite all odds against it.
We can only hope for the same happy ending in reality... but I fear we are too deep into it now.
Paul Gordon
