The last thing I wanted to do with my limited spare time is to wander into a right wing blog and get suckered into an argument about Iraq, or the war on terror. So I will terminate the argument now by invoking Godwin's law up on myself, leaving you the rhetorical champion on your own turf.

Individually, the average AQ terrorist is a fairly small menace. They are poorly trained, there aren't very many of them and they are given only lukewarm support by their fellow Muslims, when they aren't detested as a threat to the current order. Like all weak powers, terror is their mode of operation. Occasionally, terrorists hit their mark; 9/11, the Oklahoma Federal Building, AIr India Flight 182, the Chechnya school massacre. Usually, however, they are stuck with the RPG and the car bomb. If we assume that AQ caused half of the casualties in Iraq (a generous assumption in my view), then they've managed to kill 1200 soldiers at much heavier cost to themselves. Elsewhere, they live in caves and ocasionally kill a teacher. They are fanatics, but there are a lot of fanatics in the world, and damned few of them are global threats.

On the other hand, let us briefly consider the Axis powers in WWII. Powerful, aggressive industrialized states with massive armed forces and violent racist ideologies. Let us consider Soviet civilian casualties. 11.5 million, over not quite 4 years. If we estimate 3 million a year (rounding off), I get a ballpark figure of 9000 civilian dead a day. That's 3 9/11's every day, day in, day out for almost 4 years, largely conducted at pistol range. That to my mind is evil on a scale that AQ will never be able to match. Chinese civilian casualties were almost as bad, but over a longer stretch of time.

If AQ managed to kill 4200 people in the time it took Germany and Japan to kill 50 million, I know which I consider to be the graver threat.

The ability for a nominally civilized society to be able to commit crimes like that speaks not only of evil ideological fanaticism, but the ability to apply that evil in an efficient ,industrialized manner with the armed force required to conquer its victims.

What is most upsetting about Naziism is that its roots are in western civilization. When the citizens of a free society give up their rights for protection from a perceived threat… well, you know.

So now I will bid you adieu. Arguing movies is fun, but I'm on a slippery slope to exasperation with the war, and I doubt either of us will comvince the other of anything important. But thanks for an interesting blab.

And I disagree that the enemies in WWII dwarf the enemies we face now. They both have the same goals. They both have no problem partaking in genocide wherever they get the opportunity. They both have a fanatical ideology that needs to be broke as surely as their desire to fight us. Where they differ is in how they are fighting us. In WWII, the enemy was right out there where we could see them, using tanks and planes and millions of soldiers in uniforms. The enemies today use roadside explosives, suicide bombers, children with explosives strapped to their chest, and a media that's either willing to peddle their propaganda uncritically ot ignorant about how badly they're being coopted by their own "go along to get along" philosophy.

Read that first line carefully -"We need some films celebrating the war…" and later "We need films like those that were made during World War II…".

If you want to chuck that out and look for a celebration of the heroes of war, I think you could probably do something good with the Pat Tillman story

Sure you can do a heroes movie, but they only tend to work when the war is disparaged, or if the are set in WWII, where the bad guys are bad on a scale that dwarfs anything Al Quaeda could ever dream of. For a counterexample, see the critical and financial success of The Green Berets.

But that ain't where we are right now.

We are in a time when we could use a few heroes and, whether we like it or not, Hollywood is the Hero Maker.

I have not seen BlackHawk Down, but I have heard from reliable friends that it is a good movie, and I am not under the impression that it is a morale-bulding celebration of intervention in Mogadishu.

The original article was calling for films celebrating war in the style of 40's flag wavers. This I do not believe is possible. I think any film which is honest about what real soldiers go through cannot be a celebration of war*, and that the Iraq war is too tainted in the eyes of the public for any morale-building effort to be viewed as anything but ham-handed propaganda.

*There's always an exception, and I think "Glory" works as a celebration of war, but only because I'm looking at it through the filter of a 21st century liberal who believes that wars are always bad, but not always wrong. But that's an argument for another day…

Dom: durrr? eeeeuhhhh? erp?

If a film were made today portraying war as it appeared on film in the 40's, it would soon find itself laughed into the bargain bin with Invasion U.S.A.