What the hell, some G.I. Joe!

[seriousfic]

So the Joes are in South America to do something involving a coup. This being G.I. Joe, Cobra, Destro, a fruit company cartel, and other sinister forces are at work. But in the midst of all that, our boys pay a visit to the embassy.







Happy Memorial Day everyone, and remember to check for angry gun-wielding soldiers before you do any flag-burning.



Tags: creator: larry hama, publisher: marvel comics, title: g.i. joe

Comments

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

"I can't recall exactly why they were raiding this embassy; IIRC the reasons were fuzzy and they "hated America." However, it's not an on-off thing. Frex, when America declared war on Iraq without provocation in 2003, attacking the American embassy would have been an act of war, and therefore no better or worse than most other acts of war. You can't really make that judgement from these pages."

Two things...

1) I stated government forces because they would be looking for intelligence and whatnot. While embassies should always remain untouched, I can see why a government would see an interest in plundering them. Anyone else is just being an asshole.

2) The war on Iraq wasn't without provocation and was actually legal (technically). Desert Storm ended in a cease fire, and to maintain it, Iraq had to meet certain preconditions. In the interests of trying to look big, they didn't.

Doesn't make the war right in any way shape or form, mind, but sometimes legal and right don't always meet.

[geoffsebesta]

"Doesn't make the war right in any way shape or form, mind, but sometimes legal and right don't always meet."

Exactly!

I dunno. I picked the Iraq war because it's big an obvious, but my point is that raiding an embassy is not a lot worse than, say, the Dresden firebombings. Poor countries don't have organized military forces, it's disingenuous to say that these people were automatically improper because they're out of uniform...and Roadblock's out of uniform too, by the way. What you're doing is going down the dangerous road of trying to divide people into enemy combatants/illegal combatants/insurgents/terrorists, which is just a big legal mess and moral irrelevancy. Insurgents don't wear uniforms. These people are insurgents. If their country is at war with America, then raiding the embassy is an act of war.

In the twenty years since this comic was published, it's become very obvious that there are good reasons to oppose the American government every once in a while. The Venezuelan coup was probably engineered by American forces -- were the Venezuelans wrong to fight against it?

[davidklecha]

Actually, from the context of the story, the nation is simply in upheaval. One side has corporate American backing, but neither side is at war with America proper. In fact, the following issues of the story I believe feature an attempt to kill the Joes so the government doesn't find out what was going on there and come in against the corporate interests.

The mission Roadblock, Hawk, and Psyche-Out are performing is similar to one that US Marines train for all the time, and was featured (relatively accurately) in the movie Rules of Engagement in which Marines of a Marine Expeditionary Unit (Special Operations Capable) fly in to rescue the US Ambassador and secure the embassy from rioters at the gate. No one was at war with the US, and the US had not invaded (beyond the rescue mission itself).

And per the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, not only are these people indeed acting improperly--in uniform or out--but the notional government is also in the wrong for not better stopping them from overrunning the embassy in the first place.

[geoffsebesta]

I stand corrected then.

To me, this is really an opinion piece about flag burning, and the insurgents are straw-man stand-ins for emotional effect. I mean, the guy even spits on Roadblock, who ignores it entirely.

However, there are a lot of people here who think the fact that they are inside the embassy is overwhelming. It's certainly salient. So I can't really go beyond that -- they're inside the embassy, and clearly irregulars of low moral character.

So this isn't really about flag-burning at all, I guess.

[davidklecha]

Your self-effacement knows no bounds. ;)

They're not insurgents, to quibble a bit more with your language, merely looters. But yes, Hama did almost certainly want to make a point about flag burning, and yes, the looters were a stand-in (though straw man, again to quibble, implies that the character of a flag-burning protester is constructed artificially in order to make Roadblock's point, when in fact it's almost certain that such a character would be an indispensable part of any anti-US action, even if it is just simple looting). No, Roadblock is not right to threaten "pink mist" violence, but as I detailed above in my first comment on the post, it's understandable that he feels the way he does, and it's not necessarily from a surfeit of jingoism.

[jlbarnett]

okay, but really uniforms and all are beside the point. You basically admit that this guy wants to wage war on America. As a soldier for the US military Roadblock fights for America. So you're got two enemy soldiers in which case it's entirely appropriate that Roadblock points a weapon at him when he's threatening US property which would be an act of agression. And he basically let's the guy walk with a warning.

[geoffsebesta]

Fair enough.