Elliot Friedland writing at the Clarion Project utilizes the
R-rated 2004
satire puppet-animation movie “Team America: World Police”
to illustrate how the ironic humor of the past might be the scary truth of
today’s current events.
Here’s a Team America from Rotten Tomatoes:
Team America, an
international police force dedicated to maintaining global stability, learns
that a power hungry dictator is brokering weapons of mass destruction to
terrorists. The heroes embark upon a harrowing mission to save the world. To
infiltrate the terrorist network, Team America recruits Gary Johnston, a rising
star on Broadway to go undercover. Although initially reluctant to sacrifice
his promising career, Gary realizes that his acting gift is needed for a higher
cause. With the help of Team America leader Spotswoode and fellow members
Chris, Sarah, Lisa and Joe, Gary slips into an arms dealer's hideout where he
discovers that the terrorists' plot has already begun to unfold. From the
pyramids of Cairo to the Panama Canal and finally to the palace of power-mad
dictator Kim Jong-Il, Team America criss-crosses the globe on a desperate
mission to preserve the very fabric of civilization.
Now that you have the gist of the satire’s plot, read how
Friedland weave the past into the present.
JRH 9/26/17
******************
Trump at the UN and Team America
September 24, 2017
WARNING: This article
discusses an R-Rated satire movie with crude sexual themes, violence, racism
etc. If you are easily offended, please do not read this article.
This week’s news is almost
identical to the plot of the 2004 smash hit movie Team America: World
Police, made by the creators of South Park.
Don’t believe me?
North Korea’s program
of weapons of mass destruction pose
a threat to the lives of millions of people, not to mention the stability of
the fragile international order. There is strong evidence they are cooperating
with Islamist extremists in
Iran to secure nuclear weapons capabilities for both
countries. Left-wing activist movements with a strong media presence urge
restraint and negotiations and blame American aggression for
the crisis. An effete and ineffectual United Nations meddles and hand-wrings,
but ultimately does nothing. Meanwhile erstwhile allies look on askance at what
they see as America’s crass, boorish, cowboy approach, lamenting that force
alone cannot solve geopolitical problems. Many are asking if America’s time is over.
And America’s leader stands
before the world to make a gung-ho speech putting “America First.”
Posted
by PictureBox
Published
on Oct 25, 2011
That movie saw a superhero
team of elite American soldiers called Team America infiltrate a terror cell to
discover a North Korean-Islamist plot to destroy the world and bring equality
through reducing everything to radioactive rubble. Like the best satire, it
skirts the line between irony and earnestness in a larger than life take-down
of America’s war on terror.
So what can this 13-year-old
R-rated movie tell us about the contemporary crisis intersecting Islamic
extremism, North Korean belligerence and changing power structures?
Absolutely Everything. Let’s
dive in:
America’s Enemies
Collaborate
“Saying death to America is easy. We need to express death to America with action.” — Iranian Prime Minister Hassan Rouhani.
In 2004 when the movie was
made, the idea that the North Koreans would sell nuclear weapons to terrorists
in order to fight America was pretty far out. However, as Clarion Project National
Security Analyst Ryan Mauro has repeatedly warned, North Korea and Iran are
now working closely together.
North Korea opened an embassy
in Tehran in August. Shortly after, the head of the North Korean Parliament,
Kim Yong Nam traveled to Iran for a 10-day trip. Iranian nuclear
scientists reportedly attended North Korean nuclear tests,
according to CNBC.
“There’s been fairly
extensive cooperation on missiles,” said Matthew Bunn, a nuclear proliferation
expert and professor at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of
Government. “And in fact, early generations of Iranian missiles were thought to
be basically modestly adapted North Korean missiles.”
This nightmare scenario is
alarmingly similar to the plot of Team America, in which the leader
of North Korea supplies weapons of mass destruction to “terrorists” from
“Durka-Durkastan” in order to bring down the existing international order.
What exactly about this
prevailing international order do they object to so badly that they wish to
overturn it…?
America Sees Itself as
Number One
“Americans
are asking “Why do they hate us?’ They hate what they see right here in this
chamber: a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed.
They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our
freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.” — President George W. Bush, September 20,
2001.
Everyone sees themselves as
the star of their own story. It is no accident that Team America: World
Police was made with puppets. The aesthetic of the film is based
on Thunderbirds, the British 1960s TV-series chronicling the
exploits of “International Rescue.” What Team America lampoons
so viscerally is the peculiarly American brand of self confidence which views
America as not only “the greatest country in the world,” but also the greatest
country that has ever existed.
The founding myth sees a
country forged in revolution, the only country in world history to have been
consciously created, not as an ethnic or religious homeland, but founded on
enlightenment principles of rationality, justice and freedom. There’s a reason
that religious freedom and free speech are the First Amendment, not the 5th or
17th — it’s because they are the same thing and the bedrock of all other rights
(held up by the Second Amendment, which ensures that the state cannot take the
First Amendment away without a fight).
This patriotic attitude is
best parodied/encapsulated in the Team America theme song
“America: F**k Yeah, coming again to save the mother f*****g day yeah.”
America’s commitment is these
values is in direct opposition not only to the goals of dictators like Kim
Jong-Un, but also of Islamists like leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Both of those countries see the ideology and the state as of prime importance.
American style freedom as being anathema to that ideology. They see the freedom
Americans hold dear as being an assault on their way of life and their religion.
Why do they see it this way?
America’s very faith in the rightness of its founding principles can make it
blindly confident in some of its shortcomings…
America’s History of
Racism and Recklessness Causes Resentment
“This
country was born on violence. Violence is as American as cherry
pie.” — Black American Activist H. Rap Brown,
1967.
When former President Ronald Reagan funded
jihadi fighters in 1980s Afghanistan, the long-term impact was
not considered. When George W. Bush invaded Iraq in 2003, the occupation of the
country that followed was mismanaged to the point that by 2014 a terrorist group was
able to take over a third of the country (ISIS).
Islamic State leader Abu Bakr
al-Baghdadi was held in American military prison Camp Bucca for five years and
was able to use the detention facility as a networking opportunity to build
his terror support base
— not to mention that at the same time, America lost track of $1 billion worth
of military equipment given to Iraq and Kuwait, much of which may have ended up
in Islamic State hands.
U.S. drone strikes wiped out
at least eight wedding parties from
2001 to 2011 in Afghanistan alone, according to The Nation. America
has also abandoned the Kurds, who have been perhaps the only effective force on
the ground against ISIS in Syria and is even putting pressure on Kurdish leader
Masoud Barzani to cancel Iraqi Kurdistan’s
independence referendum scheduled for September 25.
To hostile observers,
recklessness can be tied with a seeming lack of caring.
Team America brings this home in typically blunt style. In
the movie, America paints their spy (who is really a crack actor) with
blackface, puts a towel on his head and airdrop him into Cairo with all the
subtlety a loud military-grade helicopter can muster (none). The only things
the terrorists say in the movie are “durka durka,” “Muhammed,” “Jihad”
and DurkAllah.”
This sort of crude
stereotyping is routinely attacked in American media. Actors from Middle
Eastern and South Asian ethnic backgrounds routinely complaining about being
typecast in roles as terrorists,
with little opportunity for them to play more complex roles. A 2015 poll saw
30% of Republicans and 19% of Democrats supported bombing Agrabah,
the fictional country from the Disney movie, Aladdin.
In the film, this callousness
incurs the wrath of the left-wing Film Actors Guild (FAG) who preach a path of
nonviolence but end up accidentally supporting terrorists. Their name parodies
notions of “toxic-masculinity” which slurs homosexuality and femininity as a
form of submissive weakness (note the alt-right preferred slur is “cuck,” which
refers to a man who willingly allows his wife to sleep with other men).
However, negotiating alone
will never work because…
Force, Not Diplomacy,
Underpins the International Order
“Those
who ‘abjure’ violence can only do so because others are committing violence on
their behalf.” — George Orwell
One of the best scenes
in Team America comes when UN Inspector Hans Blix demands
access to North Korea’s facilities. “Or else what,” Kim Jong Il asks.
“Or we will be very angry
with you. And we will write you a letter, telling you how angry we are,” Blix
replies. Pretending to be convinced, Kim asks Blix to move a little to the
left, presses a button and drops him into the shark tank.
The scene is a brutal
reminder that, ultimately, power is the only thing that matters.
In some ways, left-wing
critiques of Western foreign policy are valid. One of the greatest strengths of
America is its robust free press and the constitutionally guaranteed rights of
citizens to criticize the government. It is vital that state excesses are
called out as part of the democratic process, in order to improve the country
and its governance. In many cases, diplomacy and negotiations are a far better
alternative to the use of force.
But this doesn’t mean we
should undermine the underlying values of America itself and throw out the baby
with the bathwater. Sadly, the reality is that it is only by force of arms that
the free press and their rights to criticize the state are safeguarded.
In July this year, to take
just two examples, a group of left-wing activists protested against gay-rights
activists from the Middle East on the grounds that fighting for the rights of
Iranian gays somehow empowers anti-Muslim bigots.
British Labour politician Christine Shawcroft’s proposed that British soldiers
have cups of tea with
ISIS rather than bomb them.
These examples underscore
everything Team America mocked over 10 years ago about the
left.
Some argue that there are
better systems out there than democracy. Maybe there are, but do they exist
today?
The West is the Best
Civilizational Option We Have Right Now
“…it has been said that democracy is the worst form of
Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to
time” — Winston Churchill
If you could live and work in
any country in the world, which country would it be? Which countries offer the
best opportunities for economic advancement, for personal freedoms, for “life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness?”
Iran is a country that hangs gay people from
cranes. Kim Jong Un reportedly executed his own uncle by stripping him naked and feeding him
to 120 dogs alive while officials watched. There is no free press, free
elections or ability of people living in such countries to petition their
government for the redress of grievances.
Anyone who thinks that the
world would be safer, more prosperous and more just with these countries having
more influence and America having less is frankly delusional. Iranian
militiamen in Iraq have no compunction about murdering civilians.
Broadly speaking, America does its best to support international human rights
standards.
No one should deny that
America’s past and present have been replete with examples of jingoism, racism,
violence, callousness and more. Yet it is possible to name another country or
another system of government that we have right now that is better?
Although there are those in
Europe who would prefer it not to be so, since 1945. America has been the
leader of the West. Through the force of American arms and the coffers of the
American treasury, Western civilization is protected.
The history of the world has
been one of savage rulers murdering each other and their hapless subjects. It
is only in the last couple of hundred years that humanity has begun to inch out
of that brutal mode of operation.
If you want to keep
struggling — inch by bloody inch — out of the abyss, then when the chips are
down, stand with America.
RELATED STORIES
_________________
Elliot Friedland is a research fellow
at Clarion Project.
The Clarion
Project (formerly Clarion Fund) is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization
dedicated to educating both policy makers and the public about the growing
phenomenon of Islamic extremism. The Clarion Project is committed to working
towards safeguarding human rights for all peoples.
About Clarion Project
Clarion Project is a non-profit organization that educates the
public about the dangers of radical Islam.
Clarion’s award-winning films, seen by more than 85-million people,
expose how radical Islamists use terrorism, murder, subjugation of women,
indoctrination of children, religious persecution, genocide of minorities,
widespread human rights abuses, nuclear proliferation and cultural jihad — to threaten
the West.
The ClarionProject.org web site delivers news, expert analysis,
videos, and unique perspectives about radical Islam, while giving a platform to
moderate Muslims and human rights activists to speak out against extremism.
Clarion Project engages in grassroots activism to achieve its
goals.
Clarion Project is a registered 501(c)(3) organization based in
Washington, D.C.
SPEAKERS’ BUREAU
Ryan Mauro
Ryan Mauro is Clarion Project’s Shillman Fellow and National
Security Analyst. A professor of homeland security, counter-terrorism and
political science, he consults to government agencies, and policy-makers.
Mauro has made over 1,000 appearances on international radio and TV programs from both the left of the right, including … READ THE REST
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