The Great American War Machine

Old Knudsen tries not to watch war movies cos he doesn't want flashbacks to Hamburger Hill ... the movie, not the battle, it was shite! 

I wanted some Netflix and chill so I typed 'watch free online' cos who the fuck pays for Netflix? but I was all out of chill so I watched the latest Brad Pitt movie War Machine with pirated Netflix and luke warm.  

Fuck yer FBI warning and yes I would steal a car so obviously I'll steal a movie. The money I've spent to be disappointed by Hollywood over the years I've finally caught on.     

The film starts with the great line, "Men are imperfect creatures, left to their own devices, all they really wanna do is play with their dicks and eat chicken."

The movie was loosely based around the firing of General Stanley McChrystal. If you recall he sort of resigned/fired because for some reason he did a Rolling Stone interview while in charge of the Afghanistan war and was pretty free with his words. 

He had to apologize to the then President Obama and VP Biden for smack talking about them. I'm surprised that Trump hasn't offered him a job. If Obama fired him then he must be good. 

General Pulver in the movie was loosely based on General Michael Flynn. A not too talented angry person that rode on McChrystal's or rather Pitt's character General Glen McMahon's coattails. 

This movie was based on the book The operators by Michael Hastings who was the actual Rolling Stone reporter that covered McChrystal. 

Ben Kingsley was born to play Hamid Karzai

Hamid Karzai the President of Afghanistan is shown as a figure of fun. This guy who is propped up by the West to lead Afghanistan had to give permission for a military raid but he knew that he didn't really have a say in it. He was hard to get a hold of so Brad Pitt's character McMahon told him to behave like a leader, he replied he was, he was being unavailable just like President Obama.  

Meg Tilly came out of retirement to act as McMahon's wife.That woman has always had a direct line to Old Knudsen's boner and seeing her older didn't matter. 

The one that got away

While the movie had some funny parts it also had a message. All that the US is doing is creating more enemies. McMahon said if you have 10 insurgents and you kill 2, how many do you have left? The answer is 20 cos those two killed had friends and family on the cusp of taking up arms and when you kill the 2 they had their minds made up for them. 

The figure is that for every civilian killed by the west 40 new insurgents are created. The movie saw a young boy killed by a grenade that was targeting insurgents on the roof of his house. The boy's father was given a couple of thousand dollars and told sorry. McMahon could clearly see the hate in the eyes of the young brother of the dead boy, another enemy created. 

You can't win the hearts and minds of the people when you are killing them. Afghanistan can partially be won but it can never be held. Alexander the Great, the British, the Soviets, history has been there and done that and failed. 

Obama had no appetite for this war, now with General Mattis in charge and an easy to manipulate president in his pocket there are more troops being sent there but no one really cares about the place. 

They grow heroin poppies because the US doesn't let them grow cotton as that would interfere with their own product being sold... you can't fight a war tied up and your certainly can't win it like that. 

If you bring the troops home you then condemn the population to Taliban rule and insurgents will grow in strength with free reign to plan more US attacks. It's a fucked up situation.    

General Petraeus or Bob as he was called in War Machine was McMahon's replacement. Just another war loving General with a chest full of medals, same old routine. 

Petraeus resigned when a NATO helicopter killed 9 Afghan boys out getting firewood. Not a career killing event just meh ... er I mean very regrettable. He became the CIA director until an affair with the author of his biography and the mishandling of classified info made him resign from that.

Scandals come and go and the great American War Machine grinds on creating dead bodies, 65 million refugees and more enemies. America has been at war 93% of its time since its creation in 1776, it's the natural state of the cuntry.