SansPretense

I saw this video the other day and it reminds me of all the demands the terrorists make (”we’re not unreasonable, let’s negotiate. All we want is the destruction of Israel and the other Great Satan and the world to convert to Islam or die…”) as well as just about any situation where the bad guys pretend to be all nice about their intentions and claim to be reasonable when all they want is to kill you.

Take that movie Hombre (4/5 stars) for example. In the movie a group of stage coach passengers are trapped inside a cabin on top of a hill. They are surrounded by a gang of outlaws… trying to steal some bags of money. Basically, just as in the video above, they had no way out and were running low on supplies. The outlaws said “all we want is the money,” but of course as soon as they got the money they’d have just torched the place and kill everyone inside. At one point the leader of the outlaws comes up and asks that someone comes down to negotiate. He asks “how yall plan on getting off this mountain.” ‘Hombre’ yells back “that’s no concern of yours, but the question on how you are going to get off this mountain is.” As ‘Hombre’ proceeds to shoot the unarmed outlaw, only clipping him because one of the other passengers interfered, the question is raised: was he justified in killing an unarmed man intent on killing them? I’m not sure that question is an easy one. Under ideal conditions, I’d say no, but in this situation, when there are other lives at stake and a desperate situation, perhaps it is? (What say you?)

As the movie goes on, one of the passengers trapped in the cabin decides to take her chances and negotiate. Of course when she gets down there the outlaws hold her hostage, tying her up on a stake with just her underwear on (not revealing due to time period of the setting) in the hot desert Sun. Hours go by and ‘Hombre’ is forced to make a decision on what to do about her: let her die or sacrifice everyone else in a rescue attempt.

The character study is quite fascinating, but for another post. I find the parallel with modern issues to be more interesting at the moment. Negotiating and compromise (appeasement) with an enemy that has very specific goals of destroying Western civilization and the Jews seems to be leading to the same type of no-win situation as the movie. For example, we compromised and negotiated with Hitler, allowing the Holocaust and ultimately a deadlier WWII. Today, we’re doing the same thing with Iran and some politicians want to do the same with other terrorist states and organizations. Not a good strategy…

As the video above says: “All we want to do is eat your brains. But we’re not unreasonable, no one wants to eat your eyes…” Let’s hope we don’t get backed into a situation that bad by playing politics instead of taking meaningful actions…