For God and Country, Geronimo, Geronimo, Geronimo

Wars are about fighting the enemy and back in the day, the enemy was very clear and was usually running towards you trying to kill you. With advancement in technology like ammunition, artillery, and basic body armor, people are becoming harder to kill. So we make bombs and even bigger bullets and so on. Also now we are not fighting for land we are fighting for different causes. In the case of Zero Dark Thirty, Americans were fighting the war on terror by locating and taking Osama Bin Laden. In which case since we were not fighting a full nation and only fighting people who all look alike, you could not tell if the person next to you was your enemy or was an ally. Using tools like a signal search to find the cell phone that was being used to make calls and then eventually using drone to look into the compound. Woman played a role in the movie by either being the intelligence behind the search or just a wife going for a gun and was eventually shot. As we move on to different types of warfare we may not know who is the enemy in the future. It could be someone who has a vendetta out for whatever country in his or her mind. Or it could be the person sitting in a cubical at the CIA Headquarters who is just fed up with life and thinks they can take on the world. Also with the ever-advancing minds of the youth now a day, kids as young as 12 are hacking the computers of federal businesses and are out doing the men and women that have graduated MIT. Which the phrase of “if you can’t beat them, hire them” comes into play and which is probably the reason why we have so many computer hackers. So if you can’t beat them…. Destroy them works just as well.

Zero Dark Thirty

When 9/11 occurred, I was in first grade. I remember everyone running around and rushing to evacuate my class as soon as possible. I remember people running in the streets, panicking. Looking back on it now, it seems unreal. Being a New Yorker, terrorism in America is a subject that hits close to home. This war began as a way to retaliate for the attack on the United States and because what Osama Bin Laden did to us was so gruesome, our country feels the need to respond in acts of the same magnitude. The film Zero Dark Thirty offers a look inside the operation of taking down Osama Bin Laden and ultimately ending the war. The movie doesn’t hold back, even having a torture scene at the very beginning. The way America treated the attack on the World Trade Center was in a “you hit us, we hit you” type of fashion. I’m not saying it wasn’t completely out of the question to counterattack, I understand where the government was coming from in this situation. However, it just created more problems. We got stuck in a war that is still going on. A new age of racism has blossomed. This type of violence in order to resolve an issue is then being shown to Americans through the media. It creates an unwarranted hatred for another race and religion. It also teaches the younger generation who may not completely understand the war or even have been there on September 11th that this is how The United States deals with it’s conflicts. 

Terrorist Warfare

There are many was in which war has changed in the age of terrorism. Before you would know who your enemy was. You would be able to find the enemy just by them wearing the other uniform and that was all you needed to engage and destroy them, but today you need to jump through so many hoops to get authorization to use lethal force. You first have to find the enemy who knows the rules we play by and knows how to take advantage of these rules. They know as long as they keep their name clean that we can not engage. They know that we can not engage them unless they commit a hostile act first and they use this to their advantage by being able to walk up right beside you looking innocent and obtaining information they can later use against you or just use suicide tactics to take you out right then and there and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. They are able to do this because they don’t wear a uniform, they blend in with the innocent civilians who are just trying to live their lives the best they can. Also the technology of war has changed a little instead of picking up radio transmissions and deciphering them, we just use wire taps and satellite recon to observe and hopefully identify a target so a strike can be authorized. The terrorism also feeds off the media who just feeds the fire by airing their attacks, it is just like a toddler breaking something to get attention. They can not get attention if you ignore their attacks and not let them instill a sense of fear amongst the  populous. But this is not all that new, it is just a form of total warfare which is probably the oldest type of warfare. It is to not just attack the enemies military but to attack everyone they hold dear to them, and is the most effective form of warfare.

Racial Warfare

        Comparing modern war on terrorism with all previous wars based on the movie “Zero Dark Thirty”, I think the key difference is the involvement of intelligence and the random of detention of people with brown skin. It is not that previous wars did not involve intelligence, but the amount of agents that are working for targeting and strategic calculation is more than the soldiers who actually execute the plan. Like in the movie, there is only one seal squad and one single operation that carries out the plan, but the plan itself took more than 129 day to be completed; which unlike previous wars, the soldiers mostly did the job, with minor strategic calculations, and focus more on reacting to whatever happened to each individuals or teams. The other aspect is the racial aspect, the US only kill Arabs and the Al Queda only kill westerners, these activities only increase hatred and nothing was actually accomplished. “One is killed because another was killed”, said by Dr. Sun, the founder of the republic of China(Taiwan), this saying could be extended for racial issues, in previous wars, one is killed, and hatred grew in a limited amount of people that knew the dead person. However, in war on terrorism, hatred grew in a large entity of people, such as Arabs and westerners; not that these two races are programmed by someone or some government, but in terms of human nature, specifically favoritism, the same race tend to have more sympathy toward their own kind; hence, when seeing their own kind got killed, regardless of religion, beliefs or nationality, one would hate whoever did that, and in war on terrorism, a specific race is hated. 

Wars on Ideologies

Terrorism has become a more and more prominent method of warfare in the 20th and 21st centuries. While terror has been used as a weapon since the beginning of war, the rise of terror tactics being used by radical Islamist groups has risen to a unique level not seen before in modern history. Likewise, a superpower's response to an assault by extremists is also something not before seen, especially on a global scale. Massive invasions against other armies are becoming less and less common in the nuclear age, and now it tends to be a state government military fighting opposition with an ideology. The point of terrorism is that it can happen anywhere at any time, so therefore the coordination and sophistication needed by a group to carry out an attack is complicated, as is tracking this communication.

This is a colossal change from what the military spent hundreds (thousands) of years perfecting; warfare between armies. Land combat, air forces, tank warfare, etc etc, generals and tactics. Now, it's tracking down social networks, large families, and very specific individuals on the other side of the planet from a totally different cultural background. It's intelligence gathering and specific strikes, theoretically. Special forces and drones are gaining prominence in this new era. Wars between nation states are expensive and painful for the world, while simultaneously radical ideologies are using violence on a global scale with terrible results.

The result is a War on Terror, a war on an open-ended ideology with no clear beginning or middle or end, that has consequences we can't foresee. It's a different era.

Zero Dark Thirty

So Zero dark thirty made me sick literally. Like I have heard torturing and I have always tried to stay away from watching movies like this. I mean violence is typical in war and I guess necessary as a method of obtaining information but I also find it  crazy as to how people will use violence or justify their use of violence in wars. I mean I’m not too much into war or know a lot about it but the use of violence has definitely increased in the age of terrorism. I guess in a way I always thought about war being just plain fighting like soldiers shooting at each other (this may be a naïve way of viewing war but hey that’s what I thought it was) and watching this movie allowed me to understand a totally different perspective.  To associate religion with certain actions is disturbing simply because while all religions might not agree on certain things, most religions do not promote violence, killing and so on. I mean although I’m not Muslim I’m sure without an ounce of doubt that there is nothing with in the Qur’an that states murdering a mass amount of people is okay, and then to claim it’s in the name of Allah…ahh that’s just a tad bit crazy to me.  It was very disturbing watching this movie I mean you hear of this stuff going on but I guess to actually put a picture to it was very unsettling. I was kind of scared for Maya throughout the whole movie.

Zero Dark Thirty

I've never really kept up with the wars going on because when 9/11 happened and America invaded Iraq I was too young to really understand. So much misconstrued information has been put out there that there is no clear story as to what happened. I do believe the US had a right to fight back because of the terrorist attack. Terrorism is a horrible thing and is usually done by a group associated with a certain country or religion. But the thing a lot of people don’t realize is that it is not the whole country or religion that is to blame. It’s extremist. And just as Zero Dark Thirty showed, many just associate color or religion to a terrorist act. For example when Maya was leaving her house and she was shot at just because she was white, not because they had knowledge of her being in the CIA.

Torture seems like a very common thing during war and trying to find out information. They tear someone down physically hoping to break them into caring about only their own well-being, changing their loyalty in hopes of saving their own life. Terrorism does not seem to care who is harmed, as long as a message is received. With this war, crucial people would give up their lives just to kill Americans, whether they were civilians or the leaders of America.

Zero Dark Thirty

Throughout the history of time, warfare has developed and evolved. It is not what you see in movies, with one side of men charging at the other side. Warfare has become slick and sneaky. Guerilla warfare tactics of popping up to blow a quick and fatal blow to the enemy is common. While watching Zero Dark Thirty, it was clear to see that it is hard to distinguish friend and enemy in battle. For the soldiers over seas, they must be trained to determine whether or not someone is good or bad, and sometimes their decision takes too long and it can cost them their lives. I believe that more and more soldiers will get psychological disorders coming back from war because war has turned into a mind game. Our soldiers sometimes do not know who is good, who is bad, and they do not know when they could be attacked next. Guerrilla warfare is not a new tactic, and we have been known to use such tactics as well. Evidence is shown in the capturing and killing of Al Qaeda leader, Osama Bin Laden. The movie's main character, Maya has dedicated her entire service time to finding the Al Qaeda leader. Throughout the movie, I got a nervous feeling about what was going to happen next to her and her plan, even though historically, I knew what would happen. The tactics of warfare that have evolved throughout the war on terrorism have proven to be effective physically, but for those involved; the emotional and psychological risk seems even more effective. While reading Stick Soldiers, Hugh Martin gave an example of how this tactic of warfare impacted him even after the war. He explains that while on the road back home he thinks there could be a possibility of an IED, even though he knows it is a ridiculous thought.  By reading and watching about the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is clear to see the changes towards future warfare tactics.

Violence as Validation

I was never the type of person to keep track of wars because honestly, they scared the heck out of me! Violence is not my thing so I can't really say how much war has changed in the age of terrorism because I tried to stay away from watching things about the war or hearing about the war and my grandmaw wanted to keep me away from violence as much as possible. As I got older though I learned more and more about terrorism and 9/11 and it really confused me and this is mostly because of how much the terrorists would use their own religion to validate their actions. A lot of that is shown in Zero Dark Thirty, but I also see these kinds of validations happening outside of war, for example, cults. I'm not that much of a religious person, but my grandmaw is. If there's one thing I've learned from religion, religion classes, and my grandmaw it is that God probably did not intend on people using his word to validate horrible things such as murders,torture, or cults. I think God wanted more positives actions to come from his teachings rather than negative ones. But that may just be my opinion and like I said I'm not that much of a religious person. It's ridiculous and selfish that people really think that this is what their religion wanted them to do because I highly doubt that. Maybe they need to re-interpret their religion? But I do know that there are some people who do follow a different interpretation of their terrorists religion, but I'm just talking about the terrorist's in this particular blog. As for the changes of war in the age of terrorism, from what I do know, I think a lot has stayed the same and just more information came to the light as technology progressed. I think war has always been brutal and terrorism is just going with the flow of the pattern.

Terrorism and Torture

The beginning of the movie Zero Dark Thirty, there were quite a bit of gruesome torture scenes. I’ve read and heard about many methods of torturing people from history at different regions and cultures. However, it still did not prepare me for the scenes that I watched in the movie. Even animals did not deserve to be treated like that. The prisoner was deprived of food, water, and even sleep. I guess I can see what the CIA must have thought when they decided to torture people to extract information because terrorism causes a lot more harms and more civilians’ deaths are involved.

The purpose of terrorism is to destroy the morale of a nation by the random murder of innocent people. Randomness is the crucial feature of terrorist activity. This showed throughout the movie. Random shootings and bombings happened so frequently that it put people in constant fear for their live. Ordinary citizens are killed and no defense is offered. Terrorism communicates the most extreme and brutal of intentions. Essentially, it is the mass murder of the population under attack and focuses on people whose natural existence has been radically devalued. Terror is the totalitarian form of war and politics, and it shatters the war convention. It breaks across moral limits beyond which no further limitation seems possible. In other words, terrorists just kill others just because they are different politically or religiously.

            However, whether torture is a good way to extract information is another question. The type of torture that we saw in Zero Dark Thirty is called interrogational torture. Its purpose is known to the victim, which is the victim’s performance of some actions which he can perform and this performance will end the torture. I guess this was how the CIA used to justify those tortures inflicted on the prisoner.

Zero Dark Thirty

War has changed greatly since the age of terrorism, but this is not the first era. Terrorism has existed for a long time and this type of guerrilla warfare is not a new idea. Fighting a war on foreign territory where the "terrorists" have lived and defended their home for centuries isn't necessarily the best idea. However when Osama Bin Laden decided to attack the United States of America he opened up a furious can of whoop-ass on himself. One that would not cease until he was six-feet under the ground. In Zero Dark Thirty, Maya our main character is dedicated to find where little Osama is hiding. Throughout the movie we see how Islam is abused by the extremists to exploit their own agendas. It is true that Islam is not a bad religion, it is like any other faith, it stresses humility and service but these terrorists twist it into a warring and blood thirsty faith. When you fight against terrorists it is not a straight up fight. Most terrorists aren't dressed as soldiers waving flags representing their nation. They might look like civilians and blend in with the crowd. We have to go looking for them, and when they look for us it is not in the open, it is behind closed doors with them trying to stab our soldiers in the back. They cannot really be blamed for this type of warfare though because if you had to take on the United States military and you were just a backwards poor nation in the middle-east how would you take the US head on? You can't. Unfortunately terrorism has had a big impact on many young people in these areas and they still recruit men to fight against us. In order to keep civilian casualties low we cannot unleash the full force of our military, there has been too much death already.

Religion Vs. Politics (Zero Dark Thirty)

Zero Dark Thirty redefined the meaning of war for me. The whole quest of finding Osama Bin Laden, which took 10 years, portrayed the terrifying underlying complications with government and Al-Qaeda. As I am Muslim, I know how peaceful Islam is. By seeing all the terrorism and bloodshed in this movie while taking the name of “Allah” in order to perform the act of terrorism exemplifies how Islam is being used over and over again in order to gain all the corrupting powers for Al-Qaeda and its corrupted “so called” Islamic leaders.

Once of the scene that stayed affected me the most in the entire movie was when there was a suicide bomb attack in Camp Chapman. Before the attack, the only thing he said was “Allah-Hu-Akbar,” which means “God is the Greatest.” Being a faithful follower of Islam, it is amazing to me that how these Islamic groups are mass murdering, destroying countries with the name of Allah. As all these Islamic leaders proclaim that they have memorized every section of Qur’an, which is an ultimate lie, because it is clearly written in there that murders, lies, adultery, all of them will cause great consequences in the day of judgment.   

These leaders have portrayed this peaceful religion in a way that now whenever a bomb attack occurs anywhere in the world; the Muslims are always to be the first one to blame. These leaders preaches to respect women yet they treat them with the most brutality, cruelty, and even sometimes kill them because in their opinion they haven’t done what their “Man” has asked them to do.

Zero Dark Thirty is a great example to see what corrupted leaders can perform in the name of their religion and kill thousands and thousands of innocent people while believing that they are acting upon what has God asked them to do. This movie shows how extremist Islamic leaders are capable of just to remain in power and the only one to be in power.

Making the nighttime blush

Just for clarification it is M16A2 not M-16A2 but that is a different argument for later.

“M-16A2 Assault Rifle”

Martin’s poem, M-16A2 Assault Rifle, focused on every small detail of the rifle that he possibly could. Martin focuses on how he cleans the rifle and how he holds the rifle. He almost sounds like how a US Marine would if you asked them to talk about their rifle. But then again a Marine would just start reciting the “Rifleman’s Creed”. Martin talks about the rifle like as if it is a member of his family, which is understandable since he doesn’t have any family in Iraq as he is there. The poem more specifically focuses on the mundane of war life, which is something only O’Brien has talked about in his stories. At the end of the poem Martin takes a different turn where he says he rather hang up his rifle than to get the slightest bit of dirt on it. Which Martin makes an association to the shooting that he calls making the night blush. That is a wonderful association because bullets being fired at night does look like red burst in the darkness.

“The Stick Soldiers”

Martin did a fabulous job of really capturing the difference of opinions that Americans and Iraqis had for this war. When he was reading the American children’s letters he described the pictures that they drew along with some kids sending what they wanted for Christmas and to send best wishes to those soldiers. Even though the children of Iraq pictures on the concrete walls of what they wanted to soldiers to do or not really threats. The children of Iraq only wanted the American soldiers dead or just gone. Which is understandable because who really wants a bunch of soldiers to be around busting in their home door? Hugh Martin chooses the small details to bring out which is a good thing because the small details are what really show description in the stories.

Poems

The first poem in the book, “M-16A2 Assault Rifle,” is a good one. It goes into a lot of description about how a soldier views his personal weapon. Any soldier knows that his weapon is the most important thing he can be issued. Good boots may make marching less painful, a good sleeping bag will keep him warmer at night, but a rifle will save his life and therefore requires great care. Turner speaks about his weapon in a way that shows that it is something he takes great pains to care for. To this day I can still feel my old rifle in my hand, I can remember every crevice inside and out, I remember where I had to spend extra time cleaning, and I remember the tricks I learned to keep it operating. I smiled with nostalgia while reading this poem.

“First Engagement” is also an interesting poem. It details Turner and his platoon engaging a vehicle. Turner states how everything goes wrong for him: he misses when he shoots the first time and before he can correct his mistake he slips and is unable to do so before the shooting stops. Ultimately the entire engagement is pointless, the platoon is engaging a car with a father and son moving rebar to repair something at their house. My first engagement was also full of mistakes and confusion that don’t need getting into.

The poetry of Brian Turner seems to be less personal. Even when discussing events that he was present for or happened to him directly, he presents them in a way that is detached. Tim O’Brien for example was a very personable author. All of his stories, even the ones that had nothing to do with him were told in an incredibly passionate way: full of emotion and zest. Turner’s poetry is the opposite, it’s told in an almost sleepy way. There isn’t any passion, there is no personality; there is just detail.

Heart Of Darkness

While reading Conrad's passages in his book, The Heart of Darkness, I noticed many comparisons and views that he had about Africa. It seemed to me like he compared Africa and Europe to each other, mostly criticizing the way Europeans criticize Africa. He believes that many Europeans and westerners are ignorant to the problems in Africa, and the culture that surrounds it. Conrad believes that western civilizations have become hypocrites due to imperialism. They want to spread peace, but their idea of peace is invading and imposing their beliefs to other civilizations. This historically has been the case of not only Africa, but the entire world. It seems like every nation has been impacted in some way by imperialism, and Conrad firmly believes that Africa does not need the influence of any western civilization. While watching Apocalypse Now, I saw some of the hypocrisy that Conrad stated. The Americans seemed to feel like the Vietnamese people were inferior to them, by calling them 'gooks' and by bombing villages without mercy. We tried to influence a nation that did not seek our help, and therefore both parties suffered. In my opinion, the United States should not play the role of the world police. What we should do is contact nations and see if they would like any humanitarian assistance, and go from there. If they want our help, great, but if they don't, who are we to impose on their human rights? We as citizens of earth, should be willing to help each other, and sometimes war cannot be avoided, but sometimes it can, and should.

Martin poems

The poem “The War Was Good, Thank you”, I think Martin is expressing his fear of doing something wrong that might get him in trouble; he was reluctant to commit in the military completely because by being too active may be perceived differently, not that he is afraid of the war, but he recognized that for soldiers in Iraq, the real war is internal, within the military. The poem “Assault Rifle” is quite a simple poem, showed that how bored he was staying in the military, some days was just like some days, all day every day endless repetitively performing the same procedure, with no convincing reason to himself of doing so. Personally, comparing Martin’s poem with other war poets, Martin’s poem was more appealing to me, more entertaining without complexity or symbols. War poets all were trying to represent the same experience during war; however, what makes Martin different from all others was his attitude, he does not share the common deep philosophical thoughts, and that’s what makes him great. Because sometimes, with over polishing symbolism, it is though for readers to be engage and to correctly interpret the author’s message. 

The Stick Soldiers

            Throughout the course the literature that we have read has been at least in my case of wars that have occurred in the past. In The stick Soldier, the poems of Hugh Martin stand out a bit more because I can relate more to the historical events that make up that moment in time.  For Example in his poem The Summer of Crawling, Martin, retells us a day of training and army exercises. At first I just pictured young men just crawling in the dirt, however, the poem ends with an army chant, “gotta train, gotta train, gotta train to kill Hussein”. This made me think of all the media coverage that was giving to the war at the beginning. It made what I was reading feel more real, and every word left a lasting impression. The other poem that caught my attention was titled Tomorrow, We Go Up North. Here we have soldiers who are ready for combat, but that for many is their first time in this sort of situation. I think something that has stood out for me in most of these books, poems, novels and short story is that most of our main characters are young guys that have to face difficult situations at an early part of their lives. These soldiers have not lived enough to be prepared to handle all the curve balls that war has to offer. Just young dude drinking “non-alcoholic beer”