I’m overjoyed they rescued Luttrel.
Am I willing to chalk it all up to the much-ballyood “Pushtunwani”, the ANCIENT warror tradition of taking in the visitor and protecting him against his enemies, whatever the cost...?
WHAT A BUNCH OF MALARKY..!
It’s exploiting the western penchant to search around for Karate-Kidesque, Eastern mystic pseudo-religiosity.
Nah —he happened across folks who were super pissed at, “the devils who infest our otherwise perfect valley”.
Saving this honky was a way to get back at folks who ticked off these particular villagers, and maybe make a bit of scratch from the stupid honky’s rich friends.
GREAT MOVIE. GREAT RESCUER. CUTE KID.
Was it all apolitical pure generosity?
OH PLEASE. The whole country is over-run with camel-traders trying to figure out a way of making a dime or two off the latest imperial suckers.
I’M GLAD HE WAS RESCUED.
As thanks the US military hired this guy’s village to do all kinds of “road repair”. That made sense, since word would spread and maybe provide hope that future lost personnel would be turned over by money motivated people.
A verrrry old trick in Iraq was to bury a dog, then start wailing to US forces about “my poor cousin, who was fatally struck by a humvee, here he is buried, and now I’m so sad and poor...” and they’d run a corpse dog by the grave, and the dog would alert, providing evidence that SOMETHING dead was down there —and this whole scenario was because the locals knew Uncle Sugar was by Iraqi standards pretty generous with financial compensation.
“Why did you bury the body so quickly; we’d have preferred to actually SEE it, the better not to get conned...”
“Ah, this is our ancient Muslim tradition —he only gets 1 virgin if the deceased is not buried before nightfall...!!”
And after enough shady scenarios like this they finally got ambitious enough to dig down and CHECK on things, and presto! They’d dig up a dead DOG, and it was all a scam:
The Middle-East is totally overrun with people like that —it’s normal.
The rescuers of Marcus Luttrell saw a payday, and they got one, and it’s good.
Don’t be swept away by all this elaborate, honky-centric, “Pushtunwani” flim-flam...
Agreed. Read Jake Tapper’s book The Outpost for a sense of the mindset of these people.