Rambo and the Mean Girl

posted by Juan Cole @ 9/05/2008 12:52:00 AM

The Republican Party convention in Minneapolis gave us two American film narratives in an attempt to shift the national political debate away from issues and accountability to personalities and fluffy ideals.

Former Reagan speech writer Peggy Noonan let the strategy slip in an unguarded open mike moment. Asked if Sarah Palin is the most qualified woman Republican the McCain camp could have found, Noonan exploded: "The most qualified? No! I think they went for this -- excuse me-- political bullshit about narratives --"

McCain's convention speech positioned him as John Rambo. The popularity of the Rambo: First Blood 2, historian Melani McAlister argued in her Epic Encounters, derived from the way it allowed its hero, a betrayed veteran, to fight the Vietnam War all over again and to win this time. McAlister suggests that the popularity in the United States of Israeli macho operations such as Entebbe derived from this same Rambo complex, a desire to compensate for the humiliating defeat of the United States by the Vietnamese and their Chinese and Russian allies.

McCain dwelled at length on his years as a prisoner of the Vietnamese and even adverted briefly to having been broken by torture. The rage and abasement of that moment when he signed a confession of war crimes and denounced the United States

McCain has spoken of his breaking before, as in an October 12, 1997 60 Minutes interview that his critics sometimes misquote:

'Sen. McCAIN: I m--made serious, serious mistakes and did things wrong when I was in prison, OK?

WALLACE: What did you do wrong in prison?

Sen. McCAIN: I wrote a confession. I was guilty of war crimes against the Vietnamese people. I intentionally bombed women and children.

WALLACE: And you did it because you were being tortured...

Sen. McCAIN: I...

WALLACE: ...and you'd reached the end of the line.

Sen. McCAIN: Yes. But I should have gone further. I should have--I--I never believed that I would--that I would break, and I did.'



The film Rambo III had the former Green Beret go off to fight in Afghanistan against the Soviets. Ronald Reagan and Saudi King Fahd's joint jihad against the Soviet Union was a kind of real-life Ramboism, a guerrilla war paid for with $5 bn from the US and Saudi matching funds, and funneled through the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence. McCain also supported the raising of a private army of tens of thousands of Muslim jihadis to target Soviet troops and Afghan communists:

' Consider this AP article from 1985:


' Rep. Tom Loeffler, R-Tex., presented the "Freedom Fighter of the Year" award to Afghan resistance leader Wali Khan on behalf of the U.S. Council for World Freedom on Oct. 3.

Loeffler called on Congress and the American people to "broaden support" for freedom fighters in Afghanistan, reminding listeners of America's own fight for freedom.

Congress has agreed to give $15 million in covert assistance to the Afghan cause, the first time the legislators have "stepped forward" with aid since the beginning of the conflict, according to Loeffler. . .

Accepting the award on behalf of Khan was Pir Syed Ahmed Gailani, head of the National Islamic Front of Afghanistan, for which Khan commands 20,000 resistance fighters.

Other congressmen who joined Loeffler included Rep. Eldon Rudd and Rep. John McCain, both Arizona Republicans. '


It was out of the Reagan jihad about which McCain was so enthusiastic that al-Qaeda emerged.
FINISH READING @ http://www.juancole.com/2008/09/rambo-and-mean-girl.html

Goofy and wicked stepsister.

John Rambo. The popularity of the Rambo: First Blood 2, historian Melani McAlister argued in her Epic Encounters, derived from the way it allowed its hero, a betrayed veteran, to fight the Vietnam War all over again and to win this time. McAlister suggests that the popularity in the United States of Israeli macho operations such as Entebbe derived from this same Rambo complex, a desire to compensate for the humiliating defeat of the United States by the Vietnamese and their Chinese and Russian allies.
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As for Sarah Palin, her spiteful and snarky dismissal of Barack Obama and community organizers recalls the Tina Fey film "Mean Girls." Palin, the former beauty queen who posed in a red, white and blue bikini with a gun, is very like the leader of the Plastics clique in "Mean Girls," the Rachel McAdams character, Regina George. Her clique sets the standard for style at school, establishing itself at the top of the social hierarchy by its regimented exclusiveness. Those who are in any way different are put down by the Plastics, who crow about their superiority just as Palin exults in her (largely non-existent) "executive experience." Although the surface narrative of Sarah Palin is her everywoman small town ordinariness, the subtext is that she is special, as capable of shooting a tiger as Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and as at the same time a veritable Miss World. The McCain camp is hoping that the American common person will be seduced into Palin's Plastic clique just as the Lindsay Lohan character was in the film. (Lohan's character was initially an outsider, having returned from Africa . . .)

<The Iraq War is another Rambo moment for McCain, another opportunity to redeem himself and his country from the failure of Vietnam. McCain's insistence on a "victory" in Iraq that he will not define is more the compulsive acting out of an internal script than it is military strategy or tactics.>

<<<<<If we extrapolated out Iraq's August death rate for civilians over 15 years, that would be 64,000 or not far from the toll in Lebanon's war.

Let me repeat: The level of violence at this moment in Iraq is similar to what prevailed on average during one of the 20th century's worst ethnic civil wars! It is still higher than the casualty rates in Sri Lanka and Kashmir, two of the worst ongoing conflicts in the world.

Only in an Orwellian society could our press declare the relative decline in monthly death tolls in Iraq to constitute "calm" in an absolute sense.

And that is if the August levels are taken as the baseline and if the numbers continue to be that low. If we averaged deaths during the previous 12 months, the baseline would be much higher.

The current Iraq Civil War is one of the world's most deadly continuing conflicts, worse than Sri Lanka and Kashmir and on a par with the 15-year long Lebanon Civil War!'>>>>>



A crucial element in the fall of violence from the catastrophic levels of summer,2006, was the ethnic cleansing of Baghdad of its Sunnis.

The classic Mean Girl tactics are snark, put-downs and spreading around false rumors about people you don't like. When Palin falsely charged that Obama planned to raise taxes on middle class people, or blamed Senate majority leader Harry Reid for inaction even though it was the Republican plurality in the Senate that rejected most of his initiatives, she is playing classic Regina, declaring who is in the Plastic clique and who is outside. Even the boasting about being a soccer mom is a claim on status (poor women are not soccer moms, and how many minority women are?)

he has struck me as just "goofy" for quite some time, IMO he lost his credibility as a "war hero" when he came out in support of torture, what was his point "it worked on me so it will work on them too?" as to Missy Sarah she gets mixed reviews at best, her lies during her acceptance speech have been well exposed and as for her family life, that one speaks for it self, she's trying to force a "for appearances only" marriage on her own 17 years old daughter, what would she do to America for appearances?

their definition as the CONS wanted them related of these two 'characters'