Film note: Red Dawn in Afghanistan

I've decided to start collecting instances of foreign policymakers comparing the real-world to film.

My most recent example comes from Matthew Hoh, the former U.S. Foreign Service officer who resigned his post in protest of American strategy in Afghanistan:

"We're not getting at the root issues," says Hoh, the former Foreign Service officer. "We don't like to admit that, in the case of Afghanistan, maybe our presence is making the situation worse. That maybe these people are fighting because they don't want to be occupied. ... Remember the film Red Dawn? All of us, we talked about it a lot, all of us always thought we'd be on the other side of Red Dawn -- we didn't think we'd be the ones with the attack helicopters. ... So it's a very humbling experience to realize, you know, we're the occupying power."

As the American Prospect article from March 2010 points out, the Obama "administration admits that fewer than 100 al-Qaeda terrorists remain in Afghanistan."

And whatever happened to that civilian surge?


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