We Are Governed By Cackling Movie Villains

In the new film Firewall, criminals kidnap Harrison Ford's family in order to compel him to steal from his own bank. In last year's Bruce Willis actioner Hostage, hostage negotiator Bruno's wife and kids were hijacked so that he'll help the bad guys get away. It's just like the villain in Brian De Palma's Mission: Impossible explains...Anyone can be gotten to. You find something important to them, and you squeeze.

It's nice to know that BushCo. feels roughly the same way. Courtesy of Reuters, by way of Andrew Sullivan.

Documents show US military in Iraq detain wives

U.S. forces in Iraq, in two instances described in military documents, took custody of the wives of men believed to be insurgents in an apparent attempt to pressure the suspects into giving themselves up.

Both incidents occurred in 2004. In one, members of a shadowy military task force seized a mother who had three young children, still nursing the youngest, "in order to leverage" her husband's surrender, according to an account by a civilian Defense Intelligence Agency intelligence officer.

In the other, an e-mail exchange includes a U.S. military officer asking "have you tacked a note on the door and challenged him to come get his wife?"

Is this "fighting the war on terror?" Most people might call it something more like "kidnapping and blackmail." But George Bush isn't most people...

I just feel like, if Americans want to use movie villain tactics, we could probably do a whole lot better than that tired old "threaten to kill a guy's wife" thing, which is just played out...

Here are my suggestions of movies we could rip off. I think any of these schemes would have roughly the same chance of actually making America safer as kidnapping suspected terrorist's wives:

Raiders of the Lost Ark: We've already got a big army in the Middle East, right? Why not send some of those guys down to Egypt to find the Well of Souls? You're telling me an army of invincible supermen carrying behind them the Ark of the Covenant wouldn't freak out Osama? And just as pure historical allusion, you've got to admit it kind of works.

The Godfather: We wait until a powerful al-Qaeda leader is out somewhere shopping for fruit and then brutally gun him down. (Come to think of it, we've probably tried this one already.)

Pulp Fiction: If Osama goes to Indo-China, I want a nigga waiting in a bowl of rice to bust a cap in his ass.

Goodfellas: We convince the new Palestinian/Hamas government that we are going to meet with them for fair negotiations. Then, once they have arrived in the pre-assigned room, we sneak up behind them and shoot them all in the head.

Seven: Each day, an Iraqi will be killed according to one of the Four Pillars of Islam, until all the terrorists turn themselves in.

The Incredibles: We construct a massive, evil robot designed to level a good portion of the Middle East, a robot that only the United States Army knows how to disable. Once we have saved the day, Muslims everywhere will agree that America rules and will stop trying to fly planes into our shit.

The Fifth Element: We try to convince Gary Oldman to hire some guys to kill all the terrorists for us. He seems to know people.

True Lies: I like this one, because it turns radical Muslim movie villain tactics against real-world radical Muslims. The Crimson Eagle will detonate a nuclear bomb in one major Arab city each week until all the Iraqi insurgents turn themselves in!

Back to the Future II: Using technology, we go back in time to September 10th, 2001 and just arrest everybody. Then, once we arrive back in the New 2006, everything will be awesome. George Bush might even wind up owning his own casino!

And finally...

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: If the original guy who played Leatherface for some reason objects to running around the Middle East sawing people up and making furniture from their bones, we can just hire some other plus-size, crazed hillbilly. Or just get Jeb Bush to do it...he's kind of portly.