I love to read London’s Sun newspaper for red-blooded war coverage. If you think the Washington Times and National Review are unabashedly patriotic, check out the Sun.
The item linked to above points out something that hadn’t occurred to me–the effort to capture Saddam was code-named Operation Red Dawn. The Sun notes that “Red Dawn” was the name of a 1984 movie in which Communists invade the United States, but are defeated by a gang of high school students. I haven’t seen the movie, or thought about it in many years; but Friday night I was driving home from work listening, as usual, to the Hugh Hewitt show, and Hugh was doing a movie segment with The Unblinking Eye on “guilty pleasure” movies. “Red Dawn” was one of two Patrick Swayze movies on the list, along with “Roadhouse.” (Actually, there are three or four Patrick Swayze movies that could easily qualify.)
Could the name be a coincidence? A second telling detail appears to clinch the case:
“Operation Red Dawn may have got its name from a 1984 action movie starring Patrick Swayze. The film, a box office flop, featured a group of students who become guerilla fighters called Wolverines after their town is invaded by communist troops.”
As the Sun points out, the two targets of yesterday’s raid were named Wolverine 1 and Wolverine 2. Case closed. And for Britons who are unused to our more ferocious predators, and don’t follow college football, the Sun explains: “A wolverine is a strong, carnivorous mammal related to the weasel, which lives in the forests of North America, Scandinavia and eastern Europe.” Reasonably accurate, but I wouldn’t stretch the weasel analogy too far.
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