The movie, Argo, is loosely based off the rescue of six American diplomats during the Iranian Hostage Crisis. The movie features both historical accuracies and inaccuracies. The beginning of the movie starts off showing a very accurate portrayal of the Iranian Hostage Crisis and how it came about. Just like in the movie, the crisis started all because of the US backing of an operation that overthrew Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, who they feared favored the soviets. The US then backed the Shah, who took over as an absolute monarch in Iran, using violent suppression to put down any opposition.
Rational Choice Theory in “Fail Safe” In the movie “Fail Safe” the President of United States of America meets issues that create security dilemma between two nations where he has to make certain hypothesis, assumptions, and correct decisions that will be consequential to the United States as country as well as a nation. Being at the state of Cold War, United States and Soviet Union were trying to avoid and prevent limited war that would lead to Mutual Assured Destruction of two nations. However, due to technological failure one of the USA bombers gets false signal to bomb Moscow with two by twenty megaton bombs and US cannot reach the bombers because Soviet Union was jamming US radio system. As the Commander Chief of United States of America, the President has to deal with Rational Choice Theory to stop the bombing of Moscow. He has to make assumptions why all this happened, what should be done to stop Group Six from accomplishing their mission, and if the bombers will not be stopped and the bombs will be dropped what should be done to even the situation.
After selling their lies and plans for the war to the America people, congress had given President Bush carte blanche to bring justice to those who caused pain and destruction on American soil. Abu Ghraib Prison, also known as Baghdad Central Prison, became the U.S Army detention center for captured Iraqis. “For decades under Saddam Hussein, many prisoners who were taken to the Abu Ghraib prison never came out. It was the centerpiece of Saddam's empire of fear, and those prisoners who did make it out told nightmarish tales of torture beyond imagining – and executions without reason.” (Abuse of Iraqi POWS by GIs Probed, 2004) In 2004 rumors began to surface, regarding the abuse of prisoners held by the U.S army. Initially the U.S media expressed little interest to the accusations, until photographic evidence emerged, exposing the violation of the prisoner’s human rights.
It is interesting to note that this film almost paralleled to a point, the real life scandal of President Clinton and his threats of military action against Iraq; the film started production before the Lewinsky scandal, but opened up after it happened. To pull of the ‘war without a war’ idea, they turned to Hollywood; more specifically to Hollywood producer Stanley Motss to pull it off. So Motss and crew start planning and executing this fake war; they come up with slogans to support the war and the cause, recruit a singer to come up with a moving theme song (shades of Lee Greenwood? ), and even come up with actors to portray the needed parts. More importantly are the ‘leaks’ that are let out to the media; something that the media is more than willing to run with.
The idea behind is to tell that some albanian terrorists tried to smuggle an atomic bomb into the United States, through the Canadian border and as nobody really knows what is going on in a small country somewhere in-between Europe and Asia, which such a rich war history, people start to believe what they see. Through many stage managed stories the spin doctors in the movie manage to make the population believe the war and to create a huge wave of patriotism. In order to that everybody now stands behind the president, even though his relation ship to an underaged girl. Even when the CIA discovers the plan and “ends” the war through the opposite party, the spin doctors invent a hero which was left behind and is now to be saved. The whole country again believes it.
After reading the packet and watching the movie, I have realized that Argo sticks pretty close to what really happened. In the year 1980 an agent of the CIA with the name Tony Mendez snuck into Iran to bring back six American diplomats who were hiding with a Canadian household. Luckily, the Canadian government granted the six Americans passports. If they hadn’t escaped, they would’ve been stuck for 444 days. One of the big differences between what happened in the movie and in real life is that in the movie there were 7 American that escaped.
1953 marked the US’s decision to become an ally with the Shah, the leader of Iran. The United State’s tie with the Shah involved using Iran’s oil wealth for economic development, furthermore he purchased billions of dollars worth of weapons of security from the US. In 1979 the monarchy was overthrown by radical Islams that were supporters of Ayatollah Khomeini, a Shia Muslim religious scholar. The motive of the Iranian students was to demonstrate their rebellion against the Shah, in which their demand was the return of the Shah for trial then execution, additionally they asked that the US stay out of their country’s internal affairs. Carter’s approach imposed the protection of the American hostages but also ensuring the alliance with Iran, this had a negative response that affected him being reelected.
Explain how the Cold war started by 1947. America was capitalist and The Soviet Union was capitalist, America and Russia were against each other as they were both trying to prove that their way of living was better. The tried to outdo each other in a variety of ways including: Getting to the moon first, having the best athletes in the Olympics and spy’s etc… However there was one thing that they both against Hitler and Germany, they became alliances (with Britain) and worked together to try to demolish and weaken Germany. They first met in 1943 in Iran- they meted here because they couldn’t meet in Germany, as it was them that they were planning to attack meaning they couldn’t afford to let anybody overhear and hint to Germany that they were plotting certain things that Hitler wouldn’t like. This gathering was called the Teheran conference.
The Iran hostage crisis, referred to within Iran in Persian as تسخیر لانه جاسوسی امریکا (literally "Conquest of the American Spy Den,"), was a diplomatic crisis between Iran and the United States. Fifty-two American diplomats and citizens were held hostage for 444 days (November 4, 1979, to January 20, 1981), after a group of Iranian students, belonging to the Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line, who were supporting the Iranian Revolution, took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. [1] President Jimmy Carter called the hostages "victims of terrorism and anarchy," adding that "the United States will not yield to blackmail. "[2] The crisis was described by the western media as an entanglement of "vengeance and mutual incomprehension. "[3] In Iran, the hostage taking was widely seen as a blow against the United States and its influence in Iran, its perceived attempts to undermine the Iranian Revolution, and its longstanding support of the recently overthrown Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
With that in mind, America also had missiles in Turkey targeting the Soviet Union. In The fog of war it says “We (America) lucked out from not having a nuclear war”. In the interview it says “we went eyeball to eyeball and they blinked”, referring to the friction between the United States and the Soviet Union. JFK strongly tried to keep America out of war with the Soviet Union. Kennedy asked how many American causality’s there would be if one of the Soviet Union’s missiles would go off in the United States.