Thou shalt not kill. On the other hand, if you absolutely must, it’s always nice being able to rationalize it as a “good kill”.
And that apparently has been of particular importance to the folks whose job it is to justify the use of military drones in order to slaughter – vaporize really – god knows how many terrorists to date. Along with lots and lots and lots and lots of what is called “collateral damage”.
Not that there are not actual terrorists out there that we have to get before they get us.
Instead, the debate here tends to revolve more around the gap between what the “good kill” guys tell us about “the mission”, and what the folks on the other side tell us it is really all about instead.
Or folks like me who have a rather critical reaction to American foreign policy. Sure, I want the world rid of terrorists too. I just want the definition of the word to be expanded – to include the folks who own and operate, among other things, the global economy.
That’s not discussed here though. But then it never is. Instead, this one seems to revolve more around a man who wants to actually be piloting a plane when the bombs drop rather then sitting in a modular acting out in “real life” what kids do playing video games.
This film is said to be based on “actual events”. But it is also based on a particular political spin.
If nothing else, it truly does take us inside the world of remote control killing. Killing at a distance. Sometimes thousands of miles away.
War at it’s most…surreal?
at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Kill
trailer: youtu.be/pcDB6OZgqzo
GOOD KILL [2014]
Written and directed by Andrew Niccol
[b]Tom [looking at screen]: I can see them.
Jack: Rifle when ready.
Tom: Master arm hot. Fly the laser. Target lasered. Three, two, one, rifle. Missile away. Time of flight, 10 seconds.
[a big explosion on the screen…6 folks are blown to bits]
Tom: Splash.
[long pause]
Tom: Good kill.
Jack [colonel]: Well, they don’t call it hellfire for nothing. Best use of $68,000 taxpayers money I’ve seen today.
…
Jack: What’s the body count?
Carlos: I count six, sir. But good luck figuring out which parts go in which casket.
…
Molly [to Tom]: You look miles away. Seven thousand?
[Tom doesn’t respond]
Molly: That was a joke.
…
Jack [indicating a drone to a class of Air Force personnel]: Ladies and gentleman, the aircraft you are looking at is not the future of war. It is the here and fucking now. Anytime, day or night, there are dozens of these things in the sky…and most are working in that Garden of Eden they call Afghanistan. They’re starting to think that it is their new national bird.
…
Jack [to the class]: We get a lot of shit from the public. And I’ve heard all the bleeding heart arguments. I’ve read all the fucking bumper stickers. About the Air Force is the Chair Force waging a Wii-war. It’s all a waste of breath because the Air Force is ordering more drones than jets. Drones aren’t going anywhere. In fact, they’re going everywhere. But don’t think I believe my own shit either. Cause we like to dress it up in fancy language. “Prosecuting a target”, “a surgical strike”, “neutralizing the threat”. Make no fucking mistake about it. We are killing people. So I am going to drill this into your goddamn heads everyday. This ain’t Playstation. But even though the brass don’t like to admit it, our operation was modeled on Xbox. And half of you were recruited in malls precisely because you are a bunch of fucking gamers. And war is now a first-person shooter. But when you pull the trigger here, it’s for fucking real. Ain’t a bunch of pixels you’re blowing up. It’s flesh and fucking blood.
…
Jack [to Tom]: So what did you log? 3,000 hours in F-16s, six tours, 200 combat sorties before you got here? Now they give them 40 hours in a Cessna and send them to me. And pretty soon they won’t even do that. Just shove a joystick into their clammy mitts on day one.
…
Cop: Say, Major, how is the war on terror going?
Tom: Kind of like your war on drugs.
…
Jack: Nothing explodes quite like explosives. One IED factory going out of business. As soon as he comes back taking his last piss, we smoke him.
Zimmer: Warheads on foreheads.
…
Jack: You know you’re not to blame for that. The kids getting killed.
Tom: Wrong place, wrong time.
Jack: It happens. If you want to know how I think about it, here’s how I think about it. Just now, we didn’t know those kids were gonna show up. But they knew. They knew for a fact that there were kids on those 767s they flew into the Twin Towers. They had to walk past those kids to get into the cockpits. Anyhow, I don’t want you getting gunshy on me.
…
Jack: For an unspecified number of missions we are to serve another master. Christians In Action.
[puzzled looks]
Jack: The CIA.
Christie: Were taking orders from the CIA?
Jack: You’re damn straight, Christie. The CIA takes orders from the administration, and since we’ve sworn an oath to obey that same administration, as much as it pains me to take orders from a fucking clerk, yeah, we’re taking orders from the CIA. Now what I want you to prepare yourselves for is the folks in Virginia operate under a different set of ROEs. They’ve progressed from what they like to call a “personality strike” where we know for sure our target is a fucking bad guy. Now they’ve come up with something they call a “signature strike”. And what that fucking means is it’s a hit based not on a suspicion of guilt, but on a “pattern of behavior”. So you may be called upon to fire at any dumb shleb in Waziristan who is carrying an AK-47, even though we all know that everyone and their mother in Waziristan carries an AK-47.
Suarez [half in jest]: What about their right to bear arms?
…
Jack: I got my own personal opinions as to why there’s been an expansion of our mission…which I should probably keep to myself. But what the fuck. It’s a lot easier to kill these people than to capture them. It’s really about the cost in “blood and treasure” as those D.C. hypocrites who never pay in either like to say. They know that if we try to capture them instead of kill them, we risk getting killed and captured ourselves. And the public is tired of watching coffins roll down the conveyor belts. Don’t ask me if it’s a just war. That’s not up to us. To us, it’s just war.
…
CIA official [on the phone]: Lieutenant Colonel Johns. Out of all the UAV crews in 61st Attack Squandron, Crew 3-2 has been selected to conduct special operations in the war on terror. For reason of security, all missions you carry out on our behalf, effectively never occured. You may refer to us simply as Langley.
…
CIA official [on phone]: We can corfirm. Target qualifies. Permission to prosecute.
Jack: We’re obliged to point out, Langley, that we’ve observed noncombatants in and around the building.
CIA: Colonel Johns, no one regrets the loss of innocent lives more than we do. We take inordinate care not to use lethal force where there are women and children. Unfortunately, many of our targets cynically use women and chidlren as shields to discourage attack. We have to constantly weigh the risks of their lives against the threat posed to U.S. interests.
…
Jack [on the phone]: Can you confirm that order, Langley?
CIA: In our opinion, it is proportionate.
Jack: Forgive me sir, but what the hell does that mean?
CIA: It means that in our assessment the combatants we are targeting pose a grave enough threat to the Unite States to justify potential civilian casualties. Not to mention that this pre-emptive self-defense is approved and ordered by the administration.[/b]
That would be yours, Mr. Obama.
[b]CIA [on phone]: The subject on the left, what is she doing?
Suarez: I believe she is picking an arm off a tree, sir.
…
Suarez: Was that a war crime, sir?
Jack: Shut the fuck up, Suarez.
…
Suarez [to the crew]: What was that shit? I didn’t sign up for that shit? That’s what terrorists do. You know that, right? Plant a second bomb, blow up soldiers showing up for the first bomb. Since when did we become Hamas? “Approved by the administration”. They give Nobel Peace Prizes for this now?
Zimmer: You want to talk about all the shots we didn’t take waiting for some D.C. lawyer to come back from lunch.
Suarez: No wonder they hate us.
Zimmer: They always hated us. We’re always going to be the Great Satan because we got Hustler and Hooters and we let women drive and go to school. And they’re not going to stop hating us until the savages have Sharia law everywhere on the goddamn planet. You think you’d have this job if you were over there? Do you think that you’d have any job?
Suarez: There were kids!
Zimmer: Not our fault. They shouldn’t bring kids into a war zone.
Suarez: They live there![/b]
So, who won?
[b]Tom [to Suarez]: We’ve got no skin in the game. I feel like a coward every day. Taking pot shots from a half a world away in an air-conditioned cubicle. I mean, they get lucky, they shoot my drone down. I’m not even in it. All you got to do is pull another one out of the box. Worst thing that can happen to me is carpal tunnel or I spill coffee in my lap.
…
Jack [to Langley]: You want us to kill a crowd?
[they kill the crowd…in Yemen]
Zimmer: Like shooting fish in a fucking barrel.
CIA: It is a sad fact that war is often asymmetrical. Please forego damage assessment and exist the airspace.
…
Zimmer [after watching a man assault and then rape a woman for the second time]: He’s a bad guy. He’s just not our bad guy.
…
Molly: You look miles away.
Tom: Seven thousand? You want to know about my job?
Molly: Yeah:
Tom: Well, yesterday, I was flying over a house in South Waziristan. Well, it was night when I statrted flying over their house, but they couldn’t see me. Even if it was day. It was a house of a Taliban commander. He wasn’t home. Inside, his wife and family were sleeping. When he did come back around dawn, the family was still inside but I wasn’t sure when I’d get this chance again so I blew the house up anyway. And I watched as the neighbors started pulling the bodies out. Another one of my jobs is damage assessment… which is our way of saying counting the dead. Which is not as easy as it sounds because a lot of times the bodies are in such small pieces. But this time I knew for sure it was 7. I watched all morning as these locals cleaned up the mess; got ready for the funeral. They like to bury their dead within 24 hours, which is a happy coincidence for me, because that’s how long I can stay in the air. I watched them carry the bodies up the hill to the grave site. I had information that the Taliban commander’s brother would attend the funeral. So I waited until they were all there, saying their prayers…and then I blew them up too. That’s my job.[/b]