Whatever It Takes

98121314 Hannah Ho

“Whatever it takes” is a key clause of the 2007 movie Lions for Lambs. The Republican Senate told the journalist that US government would launch a new attack in Afghanistan to get an important highland to win the war. As the proverb says: “There's no such a thing as free lunch.” So, the question is how much will US pay for the lunch? The answer of the Senate is “Whatever it takes.”

March 11, 2012, an armed American soldier left his combat outpost, heading for two villages in the Panjwai district of Afghanistan's Kandahar Province and shooting 16 civilians to death, including nine children and three women. The massacre shocked the world. The Taliban called for retribution in the form of killings and beheadings, and people of Afghanistan are furious at American forces. 

US responded immediately, trying to alleviate the impact on the relationship with Afghanistan. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta talked about the massacre at March 12: “War is hell. This kind of events and accidents are gonna to take place. They’re taking place in any war. The terrible events...this is not the first build of the events, and probably will not be the last,” adding “I do not believe there is any reason to change our strategy at this time.”    

From the above three passages, I got a conclusion that Panetta sounds like the Republican Senate in Lions for Lambs. That is, he agrees that whatever it takes, to see the mission through is the must to achieve. According to Panetta, “The latest horror in Afghanistan--the shooting deaths of 16 innocent Afghan civilians, mostly children, allegedly by a rogue U.S. soldier” is nothing but an event that takes place in any war. We do see the events in Mel Gibson’s 2007  Apocalypto. The movie begins with the quote of Will Durant, an American historian and philosopher, “A great civilization is not conquered from without, until it has destroyed itself from within.” This quote is also a portrait of the fall of Athen. Does Panetta’s taking this kind of events for granted signify any further destruction?

Another point deserved discussion is that US officials declared that the massacre was an independent accident which was work of a rogue solider with not confirmed motive. There exists many questions. For instance, how comes no one is aware of this rogue guy? What’s wrong with the monitoring system of soldier’s mental health? There must have been some clues revealing his tendency of behavior deviation. Therefore, the massacre is definitely not an independent event. Instead, this event is the tip of the iceberg. There are many questionable issues beneath.

The Senate is a fiction character, while Penetta is Secretary of Defense of the superpower US. If Penetta and all politicians could not learn from fiction, table-top exercises, or history, a determination of “Whatever it takes” would not guarantee a fruitful result.