I remember thinking about this film, shortly after the fall of Baghdad.
After yesterday's University of Michigan win over Vanderbilt,
which happened on the anniversary of the surrender of Japan in 1945, I
was reminded again.
From Wikipedia:
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mouse_That_Roared">The
Mouse that Roared is a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1955_in_literature"
title="1955 in literature">1955 novel by href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ireland" title="Ireland">Irish
writer title="Leonard Wibberley">Leonard Wibberley that
launched a series of title="Satire">satirical books about a fictional
European nation called the Duchy of href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Fenwick"
title="Grand Fenwick">Grand Fenwick.Tiny (3 miles by 5 miles) Grand Fenwick borders Switzerland
and
France in the Alps, and proudly retains a pre-industrial economy,
dependent almost entirely on making Pinot Grand Fenwick wine. Wibberley
places Grand Fenwick in a series of absurd situations, where it goes up
against superpowers and wins. In The Mouse that Roared
it
declares war on the United States after US-produced "Grand Enwick" wine
threatens to undermine their economy. Expecting to be dealt a crushing
defeat (and then rebuild itself through the largess that the United
States bestows on its vanquished enemies) the tiny Duchy instead
defeats the United States, purely by accident, by capturing the Q-bomb,
a prototype title="Doomsday device">Doomsday device that could
destroy the world if triggered.Wibberley goes beyond the merely comic, using the situation to make
commentary about modern politics and world situations.
We keep hearing that we are in a "new kind of war." (Never
mind that people
href="http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,941397,00.html">said
the same thing about Viet Nam, back in the 1960's;
it is still new.)
I can't help but think that the gentlemen who planned the Iraq war were
expecting the same thing that Grand Fenwick was expecting: The USA
cruises to an easy victory, Iraq surrenders, we rebuild the place,
everyone wins. (Except those who get killed in the process.)
Not only that, but a handful of people would get a whole lot of money
in the process.
It is true that in the endgame of World War II, Germany, Italy, and
Japan surrendered, and all are doing very well now. But is it
reasonable to think that such a thing would ever happen again?
A question to those who started the war in Iraq: If the USA
were invaded, and happened to lose, would you wave a white flag of
surrender? Or would you get a hunting rifle, sneak around in
the woods, and pick off as many invaders as you could, for as long as
you could? If you would not surrender, why would you think
that anyone else would, either? Chivalry is dead.
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The "success" of WWII is something we can't seem to get over. It led to the Korean conflict, the VietNam War, the Bay of Pigs, in which we went in cocky and overconfident, thinking that deep down all the people of the world (except their leaders) are just like us.
It also morphed into LBJ's "War on Poverty", Nixon's "War on Cancer", and Bush's "War on Terror". In the future we can expect a "War on Global Warning" but only after it's way too late to make any difference (if we're not there already).
Eisenhower's warnings about the military-industrial complex have not only come true, they've become the military-industrial-governmental complex, an all too obvious sign of which is the way that leaders from one so easily slip to one of the others.
If the USA were invaded, and happened to lose, would you wave a white flag of surrender? Or would you get a hunting rifle, sneak around in the woods, and pick off as many invaders as you could, for as long as you could?
In a case of incredible irony, right-winger John Milius made Red Dawn made such a movie in which the USSR and Cuba successfully invaded the US. The movie follows the exploits of a group of high schoolers who form a partisan group to fight the invaders. If you want to see how the Iraqis might feel, see this movie and wonder.
p.s. the film, of The Mouse that Roared with Peter Sellars is charming too
Greg,
World War II vets are referred to as "the greatest generation" for a reason. It seems that our notion of greatness has petrified around the idea that we are the champions of the free world, and anything we do abroad will have a glorious outcome.
It is worth watching Eisenhower's farewell address, over and over, in which he coined the term "militray-industrial complex."
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7462248898182965788
"The potential for the disasterous rise of misplaced power" indeed.
Oh, and you forgot to mention the "war on drugs," another collosal waste of resources.