Hacker Cinema
Lone Survivor
2013 · Film · 121 min
Directed by Peter Berg
Four Navy SEALs on a covert mission to neutralize a high-level Taliban operative must make an impossible moral decision in the mountains of Afghanistan that leads them into an enemy ambush. As they confront unthinkable odds, the SEALs must find reserves of strength and resilience to fight to the finish.
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4 comments on Hacker News
> In Marcus Luttrell's original after-action report, he stated that he and his teammates were attacked by 20–35 insurgents, while his book places the number at over 200....military journalist Ed Darack cites a military intelligence report stating the strength of the Taliban force to be 8–10.
> Luttrell's book and the film both suggest that the SEALs decision to release the goat herders led to their subsequent ambush - yet according to Gulab, people throughout the area heard the SEALs being dropped off by helicopter, and the Taliban proceeded to track the SEALs' footprints.
Yeah, I'm going to go with the reason these details are "emerging" (aka published in coordination with the DoD) is the aforementioned "unclear factual accuracy".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_Survivor#Historical_accuracy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Luttrell#Operation_Red_Wings_controversy
I've assumed this theory prima facie for a while. Further examples are movies glorifying war (Homefront, Lone Survivor). As coldtea mentions, it could be considered a form of moving the Overton window.
I had an entire semester of instruction on "The Law of Armed Conflict". It's taken VERY seriously by the military.
One example:
In the movie Lone Survivor, the SEAL team of which Marcus Lutrell was a member of is "soft compromised" by a group of goat-herders in the Afghan mountains. They were discovered when the goat herders LITERALLY tripped over them.
Now they were faced with a difficult problem. It was commonly known that the anti-coalition militia used goat-herders as scouts knowing that they would not be molested by coalition forces. Letting them go would almost certainly result in their presence becoming known to the militia. Killing them was against the ROE.
They really didn't have a choice: they let them go. In less than an hour, they were ambushed and three SEALs died. Marcus Lutrell was saved by a local Pashtun. A quick reaction force with two helicopters full of SEALs was repelled by RPGs and another 16 SEALs and other operators were killed.
SO: three goat herders were freed and nineteen men lost their lives because by the ROE, you couldn't kill the goat-herders because they weren't carrying weapons.
Ask yourself if you truly believe you could live with the fact that you freed the people who called the forces that would ambush you and kill your friends.
Our military is willing to follow the rule of law far more often than not. That's a huge difference given the life and death stakes these people are under.
This isn't a movie and there is no do-over. Making a bad decision might get your friend killed or put you in prison. Let's try and adjust our thinking to fit the circumstances these people find themselves in. It's the LEAST we can do as an informed citizenry.
(BTW: I know one of the guys who went in to those mountains to retrieve the bodies of the killed SEALs and find Lutrell. He has no illusions about the enemy he was facing.)
It's unfortunate how little this great movie is making next to typical Hollywood fare. I discuss it a bit more here, vs Lone Survivor (war porn): http://chawkins.org/post/73638345376/her-vs-lone-survivor-should-we-support-our-troops