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The Choice Is Clear
A previous post (the most recent one, actually) indicated the importance of remembering Red Dawn, going so far as to point to an article on cognitive neuroscience to help elucidate the memory processes and help readers get over the biological determinism of forgetting.
You see, Red Dawn posits the now-defunct Soviet Union as the greatest threat to the security of the American Midwest. Events of the late-nineteenth and early twenty-first century (the collapse of the Soviet Union, 9/11) have done a great deal to mitigate the possibility of a foreign invasion that can only be stopped by the efforts of a handful of high schoolers.
In the contemporary scheme of international violence, one rarely considers a conventional war on American soil as a remote possibility. Continued nuclear proliferation and the emergence of highly skilled, motivated, and funded terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda have greatly diminished focus on old-style military conflict. However, Red Dawn was prescient in one crucial manner; the use of teenage boys armed with automatic weapons--once an empowering masculine fantasy--has since been fully realized several times on foreign soil.
Despite taking Red Dawn's advice on the military capabilities of high-school aged young Midwestern boys, current and past administrations have made the strategic error of failing to recognize their key military use: in a defensive, conventional war against an invading power. If we are to believe the performances of Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen (as we undoubtedly should), it is important to acknowledge that groups like their Wolverines are best suited to defend their hometowns against the robotic machinations of conformist Commies. The current endeavors in Iraq and Afghanistan greatly overestimate the ability of paramilitary teens to preemptively strike countries hostile to U.S. interests.
It is not too late to correct this error, however. Highly trained militias can recruit and train young children in the ways of firearms and explosives to fight the real war we have on our hands: a defensive war on terrorism, whose principle targets have typically been airports and landmarks of great symbolic significance to the U.S. Deploying our corn-fed, bright-eyed teenage dudes (especially the varsity athletes) in these locations will help prevent another attack from what currently poses our greatest national-security threat.
Meanwhile, as Point of No Return clearly shows, hot babes pulled off death row to become assassins are fucking great at urban warfare. Ship em out in droves.
Red Dawn Trailer
