MovieChat Forums > Rules of Engagement (2000) Discussion > Marines protecting the embassy from an a...

Marines protecting the embassy from an armed mob in Haiti

posted 21 years ago by patsw
13 replies | jump to latest

Tonight Rules of Engagement was broadcast on CBS. I guess I wasn't paying close attention the first time I saw it. I thought the scenes of the civilians with weapons in a sort of anarchy around the embassy looked just like Haiti tonight. Hopefully our Marines will not be tasked to take fire from some of the teenaged boys and girls in Haiti I saw tonight terrorizng the people of Haiti.

Where's the instinct for self-preservation in the Yemini crowd? Didn't they realize that one way or another, the targets the guys with guns were shooting at might shoot back in order to protect themselves. Did it dawn on them that to the Marines it was eventually going to be a question of them (i.e. the Marines) or the crowd (i.e. us)

Captions? Captions in a fictional account? That's like reading a book with the last four chapters missing and reduced to a single sentence: "justice triumphed".

They could have and should have made some attempt to complete the story. I think the bad guys could have gotten away. "Deus Ex Machina". How could evidence be produced that evidence was destroyed when the evidence was destroyed?

[–] jacob-97 20 years ago

The answer to all your questions is: Because it's a crappy movie.

Thank you.

[–] pfs89 20 years ago

I still dont understand what the hell the marines did up on that roof anyway? They knew, they wasnt allowed to shoot!

[–] puje12 20 years ago

I agree with you.
I doubt I would make the same decision Childers made, if I were in his place, and I hope other people wouldn't do the same, but just take a look at it:
You are protesting when suddenly your fellow protesters start firing. Some of them standing beside you, others on roof tops.
heavily armed soldiers arrive, and lose 3-4 men before they are even in place, yet they hold their fire.

Would you ever stop and think: "Maybe I should pack it up and go home, before I get hurt?"
If not, well... then you're pretty damn stupid!

It may sound a little crude, but that's just the way I feel about the senario of the film...

[–] mivadar 16 years ago

"Would you ever stop and think: "Maybe I should pack it up and go home, before I get hurt?"

Not so much about the specific movie - just about this comment.

If You're in the middle of a protest, and the protest suddenly turns violent, it is in theory best to extricate Yourself ... in practice, You rarely manage.

Leaving a large crowd in the middle of fighting (whether tear gas and police or firearms and militants) is surprisingly difficult.

[–] zap644 16 years ago

Actually, it's pretty easy to say I don't want any part of this demonstration anymore and I'm either going to leave or separate myself from the situation.

A number of years ago, I went to watch a demonstration that did not turn out to be violent (no rock throwing, no molotov cocktails), but there were fires started (no buildings, just trash in the street). It was a march that went right past the office building I worked in. I went downstairs and watched from the office building's property. At one point, a police officer told me I couldn't stand there, but I told him I worked in the office building and I was obviously just an observer so he let me be.

I can tell you with certainty if the march/demonstration had escalated to the point of rock-throwing, I would have been out of there immediately. If it had escalated to Molotov cocktails and gunfire, I would have been out of there faster than you could say "Jihad".

If I had actually been part of the protest and violence started I would first get far away from the people acting violently and if the violence continued, I would also get the heck out of there.

I don't see how you could possibly "rarely manage" to extricate yourself from such a situation.

I also don't see how you could possibly even think about bringing children to such an event.

It is not as hard to leave a bad situation where things can only get worse as you suggest. Then again, common sense is not always common and I'm sure I'll be accused of being racist for saying this, but it seems even less common in parts of the Middle East.

[–] mivadar 15 years ago

You are making a few assumptions here:

1. You are on the edges of the crowd, or You are in a not too tightly packed crowd. (Getting out a tightly packed crowd sweeping You away is close to impossible. In mass rallies that are attacked often people fall underfoot and are trampled to death.)

2. The police will let You leave. One of the most common crowd containment techniques in a city is to close all small streets leading to the disturbance site and arrest everyone going in or out. (In less friendly regimes, arrest is the milder option.)

3. There is no tear gas. You don't see squat in tear gas, You'll probably end up going in the wrong direction, if You manage to move at all.

4. The other (possibly violent) protesters don't turn on You for trying to leave. If they just think You're not supporting the cause, You might scream Your way out of it, if there is suspicion that You're a police informant/agitator, You may not.

5. You notice that something is afoot quite early. If You don't get out before retaliatory measures start, You have a problem.

I've been in a few protests in the UK, and they were like a walk in the park compared to some more interesting places where the riot police throws in the smoke grenades before asking questions ... (also as an observer, not necessarily a protester).
I actually think that in many protests with fatalities once the sh*t hits the fan the majority of the people (except a radicalized core) really just wants to leave. (This is not always the case - there are sadly mad "tear them apart" crowds as well.)
More modern riot police tactics actually give a strong consideration to give the crowd a place to disperse to, usually in many narrower channeled directions, rather than hemming them in and telling them to disperse (where to? in the air?) ... sadly, some forces are more out for confrontation, and don't follow these practices.

Anyway - the whole thing was more a side-note.
;-) Back to our usual programming =>

[–] snipolk 20 years ago

"WASTE THE MUTHA@#$%ers!!!!!"
I love IT Great Film

[–] Spartan10 20 years ago

The Marines were allowed to shoot. Rules of Engagement in situations like that dictate that you fire only after being fired upon. The Marines were fired upon. They were justified in engaging any hostiles that were firing on them. This doesn't mean that you set your weapon on auto and fan through the crowd, you take the steps necessary to preserve yourself, your unit, your mission and american soil (the embassy)

[–] Audie-T 20 years ago

They was VC, everyone of em!

USA über ALLES!

And that little girl who lost her leg was the worst of them, heh heh heh...

Think you can trust your cat? Think Again!

[–] gnome-5 16 years ago

"How could evidence be produced that evidence was destroyed when the evidence was destroyed?"

There was a list reporting that a surveillance camera videotape had been recovered and that tape had been shipped to the State Department. It was up to the State Dept to explain what happened to the tape.

[–] imdb-3438 16 years ago

On the morning of the day that this comment by patsw was written, the U.S. Marines had just kidnapped the elected president of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and flown him out of the country, thousands of miles away to Central Africa! The Marines in Haiti had no more "right" to defend themselves or, especially, the U.S. Embassy than the SS had a "right" to defend German installations in occupied Europe.

But unlike the situation in Haiti, where only the U.S. reporting about it is fiction, this movie is a totally contrived piece of propaganda meant to justify U.S. and Israeli violence against Arabs. Except for perhaps being a bit more sophisticated, it is no different in essence from the anti-Jewish propaganda that people like Joseph Goebbels and Julius Streicher were quite rightly hung for at Nuremberg. It is also in the tradition of Birth of a Nation, the D.W. Griffith film that was made to incite and justify lynching of Africans in the U.S. South.

The people who made this film are racist criminals, period.

[–] volk_odinochka 16 years ago

This is poltical diatribe dressed up to look like movie review. First, every press report says US troops were there in 2004 coup/resignation but considering how in 2004 every US armed forces branch uses woodland camo you have quite an assumption it was "U.S. Marines". Second, assuming I have half brain and were involved in some secret coup I would either: 1) grab some woodland camo uniforms and dress the my guys to make the press think they were American troops (called a disinformation campaign) and/or; 2) better yet not wear any uniform.

Addressing allegations of kidnapping, racist lynching, violence against Arabs are beyond the scope of a 'net discussion board focused on movie reviews.

[–] desifir667 16 years ago

3438 is wrong