Beware the Rambo narrative of Afghanistan

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

The plot of Rambo: First Blood Part II is seared into the brains of American men of a certain age. Sentenced to prison following his rampage in First Blood (aka Rambo I), Rambo is pardoned in order to perform a secret mission for the government. Instructed to investigate allegations that U.S. servicemen were still captives more than a decade after the official end of the war, Rambo parachutes into Vietnam. Finding the rumors are true, he violates his orders and liberates a group of POWs from their Vietnamese and Soviet captors.

Forty years later, we're watching the emergence of a new version of the Rambo narrative. This time, debate is focused on up to 200 U.S. citizens who could not be evacuated by the August 31 deadline for the withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan.

The situation violates President Biden's promise that "if there's American citizens left, we're gonna stay to get them all out" and imposes a duty on his administration to help those who want to leave. But we should resist turning a predictable result of imperial retreat into a stab-in-the-back myth that prevents a re-evaluation of American foreign policy.

Although its details are fanciful, Rambo dramatized a real controversy. Following the Paris Peace Accords of 1973, nearly 600 American servicemen, including future senator John McCain, were repatriated in Operation Homecoming, but some veterans activists contended that a portion of approximately 2,500 Americans still listed as prisoners or war or missing in action remained alive in the country. Over the next two decades, their fate became a rallying cry for populists and hardline Cold Warriors, who saw them as victims of bureaucratic indifference, at miminum, and perhaps an intentional cover-up. The issue even played a role in the 1992 presidential campaign, when it was taken up by Ross Perot.

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https://www.yahoo.com/news/beware-rambo-narrative-afghanistan-095509168.html

[USAFRetired_Liberal]

1. Funny you posted this

Because I was thinking yesterday about how people are going to produce movies about Afghanistan similar to those 80’s movies like Rambo, Missing in Action, Delta Force etc

[Aristus]

2. Kevin Reynold's' film "The Beast Of War", the best tank movie of all time, predicted the rise of

the Taliban in the persons of the mujahedeen we are supposed to sympathize with against the brutal Soviet soldiers.

The film was released in 1988. The same year as Rambo III, one of the worst tank films of all time. Okay, tanks weren't the focus of the film, but there is a ludicrous scene in which Rambo drives the tank while aiming and firing the main gun of a Soviet-made T-72. The only tank in which that is even remotely possible is the Swedish Stridsvagn-103. When my tanker buddies and I saw that scene, we laughed ourselves silly.

Afghanistan war films run hot and cold, like pretty much every other movie depicting war.