The Iran-Iraq War 1980-1988

In September 1980, Iraq invades Iran. Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein is convinced that now is the time to strike, since Iran is still shaken by its Islamic Revolution, and he expects victory within weeks. Instead, the conflict will last 8 years, cost hundreds of thousands of lives , threaten world oil markets, and draw the US into the Persian Gulf for good. It’s the last total war of the 20th century.

If you want an indication of what a land war in Iran might look like. Watch this.....Does nobody remember the Iran-Iraq War? It was 8 years of absolute hell on earth (1980 - 1988). The US funded, armed and trained Iraq. There was no quarter given. It was brutal (think genocide . ethnic cleansing, mass murder, deportation, chemical warfare, enforced disappearance and counterinsurgency). The war caused around 500,000 deaths (excluding numbers from the related Anfal campaign - another 50,000–100,000 dead), making it the deadliest conventional war ever fought between regular armies of developing countries. Most of the present-day leadership in Iran are veterans of the Iran- Iraq War. They have seen things that Trump cannot imagine.

Trump is either bone stupid or insane (maybe both). Iran will fight until the bodies are piled high. But we still have this ridiculous speculation on the part of even so-called progressive media in the West:

"Despite launching the attack on Iran, with Israel, the White House does not seem to have fully anticipated what was likely to follow. Iran had few good military options for fighting back, but attacking US bases, US allies and merchant shipping in the Gulf was the most obvious response – to try to impose costs on the west." - The Guardian

Iran will not surrender until the armed forces (a million people, including the special forces and security forces) are destroyed. It will be brutal in the same ways the 1980 - 88 war was. The Americans have clearly not considered this.

Mariupol: The People's Story (2022)

I watched this last night. It is harrowing, to say the least. The three months the people of Mariupol endured under horrific attack by Russia is a chronicle of human suffering on a terrible scale. Click on the image above to witness hell on earth. 

 Mixed with the testimonies of a dozen survivors, most of them young women, terrible scenes retrace from the inside the siege of Mariupol, a large port in southeastern Ukraine on the Sea of Azov, from the start of the Russian invasion on February 24 to the surrender of the last combatants entrenched in the Azovstal metallurgical complex on May 21. According to the Ukrainian authorities' estimate, some 25,000 civilians died during these three months of indiscriminate shelling and firing by the Russian army, which also destroyed almost the entire city of 430,000 inhabitants, which was then surrounded and almost cut off from the world.

The Quiet American (2002)

 

The Quiet American is a 2002 political drama film directed by Phillip Noyce, and stars Michael Caine, Brendan Fraser, and Do Thi Hai Yen. The screenplay by Christopher Hampton and Robert Schenkkan is adapted from Graham Greene's bestselling 1955 novel of the same name set in Vietnam.

In contrast to the prior 1958 film version, which abandoned Greene's cautionary tale about foreign intervention in favor of anticommunist advocacy of American power, the 2002 film is faithful to the source novel, illustrating the moral culpability of American agents in arranging terrorist actions aimed at the French colonial government and the Viet Minh. Going beyond Greene's original work, the film utilizes a montage ending with superimposed images of American soldiers from the intervening decades of the Vietnam War.

Miramax paid $5.5 million for distribution rights in North America and some other territories, but the film was shelved after test audiences perceived it as unpatriotic in the wake of the September 11 attacks.[1] The film finally received an Oscar qualification release in November 2002 and went on to gross US$12.9 million in limited theatrical release in the United States. The film received positive reviews from critics and Caine was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor.

The Vietnam War - PBS 2017

This 10-part, 18-hour documentary series from directors Ken Burns and Lynn Novick presents firsthand accounts of the Vietnam War from nearly 80 witnesses, including Americans who fought in the war and some who opposed it, as well as Vietnamese combatants and civilians from both sides. Digitally remastered archival footage, photographs, historic television broadcasts and home movies offer different perspectives on the conflict. Also providing insight are audio recordings from inside the administrations of Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon.

Under the 1954 Geneva peace accords, reunification elections were to be held in Vietnam within two years. Prime Minister Diem rejected the election promise and took excessive steps to repress any opponents. The strategic hamlets were not welcome by the peasant population and by 1964, supplies were flowing south along the Ho Chi Minh trail. Viet Cong guerrillas supported by the Army of North Vietnam attacked American installations in Saigon. The bombing of the North started in 1965 in reaction to the Gulf of Tonkin incident. The Marines that began arriving in 1965 were not seen as liberators by the people. The North launched a major attack in 1965 on the airbase at Da Nang. It was eventually recognized that the bombing campaign, Operation Rolling Thunder, had failed.

The campaign in Vietnam by the US comes across as being vast, expensive (in every respect) and doomed to fail. This was a colonial war fought by people who believed they were in a virtuous struggle, Meanwhile enormous resources were being used to annihilate entire populations. Torture, sabotage, incompetence and corruption supplied the supporting cast for this disaster.

Anti-war protests began early in the Johnson administration though the vast majority of Americans at the time supported the administration. The initial protests were led by civil rights activists, the old left, women's groups and the clergy. Religious organizations had a difficult time as they were conservative by nature. As well, college students could avoid the draft if they remained in school. Blacks were joining the military but activists decried those who claimed they were trying to save people of color. Passive resistance and draft card burning were increasing. The October 1967 march on the Pentagon was denounced as anti-American as were most protests against the war. However, 55,000 participated and over 600 were arrested. The climate soon began to change. Johnson had to raise taxes and the economy was doing poorly and by December 1967 a poll showed that a majority of Americans now thought the war was a mistake. Senator Eugene McCarthy became popular by proposing an end to the war. He nearly defeated Johnson in the New Hampshire primary and his success led to Bobby Kennedy's entry into the Presidential race. Martin Luther King spoke out against the war and riots broke out across the US after his assassination. The Chicago protests at the Democratic convention and the police response led to bloodshed on all sides. During the election, Nixon attacked Humphrey based on his support of Johnson's war policies. Every Thursday, the number of Americans killed in Vietnam was released to the media. Nixon won the election by a slim margin and the Vice President Spiro Agnew began attacking the media as biased. Soon however, the public learned of the massacre at My Lai and even Vietnam Veterans began protesting the war.

The entire series is worth watching. 

All Quiet on the Western Front (1979)

"Let the months and the years come, they can take nothing from me, they can take nothing more. I am so alone, and so without hope that I can confront them without fear."

This film adaptation of the combat veteran Erich Maria Remarque's 1929 novel (the book and its sequel, The Road Back (1930), were among the books banned and burned in Nazi Germany) was made in 1979, in that small window of American film history when war suddenly was fully exposed for the obscenity it is and always has been, between the end of the Vietnam War and the election of Ronald Reagan. The Deer Hunter came out the year before in 1978. Apocalypse Now the same year. It was a time when the United States as a culture was seriously questioning the concept of international conflict and military power. Compare a few of the war films of 1980, the year Ronnie Raygun took office:

The Dogs of War: "Mercenary James Shannon, on a reconnaissance job to the African nation of Zangaro, is tortured and deported. He returns to lead a coup."

Private Benjamin: "When her husband dies on their wedding night, Judy decides to join the United States Army. She realizes that she has never been independent in her entire life. What looks like a bad decision at first, turns out not so bad at all."

The Big Red One: "Director Samuel Fuller's autobiographical tale of a special infantry squad and its intrepid sergeant during WWII follows the men from D-Day to the liberation of the Nazi death camps."

There was one last echo of horror in war in this time before the heroics became the standard again. It was far away in Australia, where Gallipoli by Peter Wear was released in 1981. Like another Australian film, The Odd Angry Shot from 1979, it depicted war as pointless. 

War steals life. Not just through death and killing and cost. But it takes youth, it takes laughter, it takes passion and creativity. It kills thought and contemplation. It destroys love. It smashes families, hopes, desires, ambitions. It takes everything and turns it into waste and decay. This film is a brilliant study in that ancient horror.

Politicians start wars
Generals organise them
The people pay for them.

All Quiet on the Western Front is a television film produced by ITC Entertainment, released on November 14, 1979, starring Richard Thomas and Ernest Borgnine. It is based on the book of the same name by Erich Maria Remarque. The film was directed by Delbert Mann. A joint British and American production, most of the filming took place in Czechoslovakia.

Come and See (1985)

Come and See (Russian: Иди и смотри, Idi i smotri; Belarusian: Ідзі і глядзі, Idzi i hliadzi) is a 1985 Soviet anti-war film directed by Elem Klimov and starring Aleksei Kravchenko and Olga Mironova. Its screenplay, written by Klimov and Ales Adamovich, is based on the 1978 book I Am from the Fiery Village (original title: Я из огненной деревни, Ya iz ognennoj derevni, 1977), of which Adamovich was a co-author.Klimov had to fight eight years of censorship from the Soviet authorities before he could be allowed to produce the film in its entirety. 

 The film's plot focuses on the Nazi German occupation of Belarus, and the events as witnessed by a young Belarusian partisan teenager named Flyora, who—against his mother's wishes—joins the Belarusian resistance movement, and thereafter depicts the Nazi atrocities and human suffering inflicted upon the Eastern European villages' populace. The film mixes hyper-realism with an underlying surrealism, and philosophical existentialism with poetical, psychological, political and apocalyptic themes.

Bombing War

On the 13 February 1945 at 10:00pm 800 bombers of the British RAF bomb the German city of Dresden. A firestorm ensued. Oxygen was sucked out of the air. The slaughter was indiscriminate. Men, women, children, babies burned by phosphor. 35,000 people were killed, at a time when the war was already lost by Germany. The war would end three months after the destruction of the city. This documentary traces the invention of aerial bombing as a weapon of war. From the bombing of Guernica on 26 April 1937 by the dreaded Condor Squadron, on loan from Nazi German to Franco to win the Spanish Civil War. From that point on one atrocity followed another. The culmination in World War Two was the bombing of Hamburg and Dresden by the British and United States air forces in World War Two and then the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the USA. This film ends with VE Day.

The destruction is brutal beyond imagination and stomach churning to watch. On this day at this hour we should remember those millions who have died from the technologies of war, through no fault of their own and at the mercy of cruel and indiscriminate leaders. Those who flew the missions to deliver the bombs were often shocked to see the results of their work, as is expressed by the military survivors who took part in the raids in this film. Aerial bombing has rarely been found to be strategic from a military standpoint. A new survey on the use of aerial bombing during the Vietnam War has seemingly confirmed what many suspected: the massive and systematic bombing of South Vietnam detracted from, rather than furthered, U.S. war aims. The argument that the nuclear attacks on Japan shortened the war is not clearly established, and the attacks were rather a demonstration of destructive power by the USA was a statement to the USSR, which was about to launch attacks through Manchuria into the Korean peninsula when the war was about to end in the Pacific anyway. 

The Battle of the Somme (1916 film)

The Battle of the Somme was a documentary film released on August 10th 1916. Until the release of Star Wars, it held the British audience record - 20 million tickets were sold in the first six weeks, from a population at the time of 46 million.

The Battle of the Somme (US title, Kitchener's Great Army in the Battle of the Somme), is a 1916 British documentary and propaganda war film, shot by two official cinematographers, Geoffrey Malins and John McDowell. The film depicts the British Army in the preliminaries and early days of the Battle of the Somme (1 July – 18 November 1916). The film premièred in London on 10 August 1916 and was released generally on 21 August. The film depicts trench warfare, marching infantry, artillery firing on German positions, British troops waiting to attack on 1 July, treatment of wounded British and German soldiers, British and German dead and captured German equipment and positions. A scene during which British troops crouch in a ditch then "go over the top" was staged for the camera behind the lines.

The Battle of the Somme (French: Bataille de la Somme; German: Schlacht an der Somme), also known as the Somme Offensive, was a battle of the First World War fought by the armies of the British Empire and French Third Republic against the German Empire. It took place between 1 July and 18 November 1916 on both sides of the upper reaches of the River Somme in France. The battle was intended to hasten a victory for the Allies and was the largest battle of the First World War on the Western Front. More than three million men fought in the battle and one million men were wounded or killed, making it one of the bloodiest battles in human history. The Battle of the Somme was fought in the traditional style of World War I battles on the Western Front: trench warfare. The trench warfare gave the Germans an advantage because they dug their trenches deeper than the allied forces which gave them a better line of sight for warfare. The Battle of the Somme also has the distinction of being the first battle fought with tanks. However, the tanks were still in the early stages of development, and as a result, many broke down after maxing out at their top speed of 4 miles per hour (6.4 km/h).

This Mark I 'Male' Tank broke down crossing a British trench on its way to attack Thiepval on 25 September 1916.

The French and British had committed themselves to an offensive on the Somme during Allied discussions at Chantilly, Oise, in December 1915. The Allies agreed upon a strategy of combined offensives against the Central Powers in 1916, by the French, Russian, British and Italian armies, with the Somme offensive as the Franco-British contribution. Initial plans called for the French army to undertake the main part of the Somme offensive, supported on the northern flank by the Fourth Army of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF). When the Imperial German Army began the Battle of Verdun on the Meuse on 21 February 1916, French commanders diverted many of the divisions intended for the Somme and the "supporting" attack by the British became the principal effort.

The first day on the Somme (1 July) saw a serious defeat for the German Second Army, which was forced out of its first position by the French Sixth Army, from Foucaucourt-en-Santerre south of the Somme to Maricourt on the north bank, and by the Fourth Army from Maricourt to the vicinity of the Albert–Bapaume road. The first day on the Somme was, in terms of casualties, also the worst day in the history of the British army, which suffered 57,470 casualties. These occurred mainly on the front between the Albert–Bapaume road and Gommecourt, where the attack was defeated and few British troops reached the German front line. The British troops on the Somme comprised a mixture of the remains of the pre-war regular army; the Territorial Force; and Kitchener's Army, a force of volunteer recruits including many Pals' Battalions, recruited from the same places and occupations.

The battle is notable for the importance of air power and the first use of the tank. At the end of the battle, British and French forces had penetrated 10 km (6 mi) into German-occupied territory, taking more ground than in any of their offensives since the Battle of the Marne in 1914. The Anglo-French armies failed to capture Péronne and halted 5 km (3 mi) from Bapaume, where the German armies maintained their positions over the winter. British attacks in the Ancre valley resumed in January 1917 and forced the Germans into local withdrawals to reserve lines in February, before the scheduled retirement to the Siegfriedstellung (Hindenburg Line) began in March. Debate continues over the necessity, significance and effect of the battle.

The Falklands War - The Untold Story (Full Documentary) | Timeline

This film really shows the "folly of war" - when fought with universal principles the men fighting it are most often decent, honourable, intelligent, courageous, even compassionate people. The politicians planning it and making it happen are cynical, cunning and mostly cowardly. An example of this is the sinking of General Belgrano (with the lost of 323 lives), which was outside the British-declared total exclusion zone of 370 km (200 nautical miles) radius from the islands. The British Cabinet, and in particular Margaret Thatcher agreed to a request from Admiral Terence Lewin, the Chief of the Defence Staff, to alter without notice the rules of engagement that had already been delivered to the Argentine government. War itself is vicious and terrifying and without victors.

The Great War (BBC 1964) - Surely We Have Perished: The Battle of Passchendaele

On this day one hundred years ago the Battle of Passchendaele, also known as the Third Battle of Ypres, began. It would rage until 10th November 1917. A total of 800,000 soldiers on both sides of the war died in the blood and mud of the Ypres salient between 1914 and 1918. This is the story of their suffering, sacrifice and slaughter.

First Broadcast: Sept 20, 1964

British and Dominion offensives in Flanders in 1917, originating from the Ypres Salient. The successful capture of Messines Ridge is followed by a partial breach of German defences at Passchendaele, with immense loss of life at both sides. Rainy weather sets in early and armies bog down in mud.

Alfred James Bromfield - British soldier 3:28
Gordon Carey - British Officer 3:57
Bryan Frayling - British Officer 7:33
Cecil Arthur Lewis - British Pilot 9:05
John Roll - Australian Sapper 9:50
Richard Talbot Kelly - British Soldier 21:25
Richard Henry Tobin - Royal Naval Division 21:33, 29:03
Sydney White - British Soldier 22:01
William Bunning - Australian soldier 25:42
Cyril A. Lee - British Soldier 36:24

The Great War (BBC 1964) Part 1 of 26 - On The Idle Hill Of Summer

This documentary shows the full insane carnage that was the First World War. Made at a time (1964) when many veterans were still alive to tell their stories, this series strips away the mythology that has come to dominate much of the contemporary discourse around the war. Pointless battles, failed strategies and massive slaughter were the consistent factors in this truly horrific episode in human history. We owe it to the poor unfortunates that were swept up by this unimaginable conflict to remember their sacrifice and to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again, even thought the present day conflict in Syria resembles conditions on the Western Front in many ways.