New Predator Movie Shows Why Defeating Insurgent Groups is So Difficult

The latest installment in the “Predator” franchise is already being compared to the best movie in the three-decades-old film series: 1987's “Predator.” It's also a highly entertaining example of why insurgencies are so hard to beat.

The film, titled “Prey,” stars Amber Midthunder, as the Comanche warrior, Naru. Trained as a healer, she hopes to prove her worth as a hunter to her tribe living on the hostile 18th-century North American plains. Dangers, from predatory animals to European woodsmen competing for the same resources, lurk nearby.

But the predator-prey dynamic viewers are introduced to changes after the arrival of a member of the predator species, possibly an ancestor of the extraterrestrial warrior that hunted Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers and Jesse Ventura in a movie set 300 years in the future.

Beyond superficially functioning as popcorn entertainment, Task & Purpose's Daniel Johnson convincingly explains how “Prey” provides key insight into how America's recent enemies have used asymmetric warfare to prevail against superior U.S. forces. Like Naru in the film, the Viet Cong and later the Taliban and Al Qaeda took advantage of guerrilla tactics and unforgiving terrain to minimize America's conventional military dominance.

Task & Purpose has more on the film, which also reminds us how belief in quick victory leads to wars of attrition:

Prey is a film about resistance, not just to outsiders and technology, but also issues such as sexism (one of the Comanche tribesmen when Midthunder's character joins their hunting party makes a sexist joke on “how they don't need a cook”) and colonialist exploitation (such as the French explorers who skin bison in much the same way the Predator skins its prey). Naru, the main character of the film, defeats her enemies by using her knowledge of hunting, the land, and the arrogance of those who disregard her because of her size and gender.

As early as 1963, an article in Time magazine offered a glimpse into the challenges posed by guerrilla warfare. It described how one of the first U.S. helicopters in Vietnam had to limp back to base after an arrow pierced the fuselage. The attacker presumably escaped, using the jungle below as cover. Similar encounters would frustrate generations of American soldiers, particularly when their leaders failed to integrate counterinsurgency operations into a comprehensive overall strategy.

The undeniable superiority of the U.S. Armed Forces can become indecisive when a war like Vietnam or Afghanistan drags on. It didn't matter that the United States won every major battle in Vietnam. Our soldiers weren't fighting for the future of their homeland that justified their sacrifice, unlike our enemies who were willing to suffer horrific losses. The North Vietnamese and Viet Cong fought on, knowing all they had to do was wait out the last contingent of U.S. troops to leave for good. In recent conflicts that America has withdrawn from our belief in a quick victory through overwhelmingly strength ignored factors that were crucial to our enemies' success: surprise and intelligence, understanding the challenges confronting large, unwieldy military forces and the mindset of the civil population.

Politicians in Washington, D.C. demonstrated they never fully understood the cultural differences between the United States and the Vietnamese and later the Afghans. Thinking we could import a U.S.-style democracy without a coherent reconstruction strategy shows the hubris of the political elite.

Outrageous arrogance is what doomed the predator as well.

As Task & Purpose concludes:

The Predator itself takes multiple opportunities to revel in its own prowess in battle, disregarding Naru as her fellow tribesmen do when they refuse to believe her claims of an unknown threat being present in the area. They even attack and gaslight her for daring to go against the wishes of her brother, the chieftain (a situation that women often face in real life).

…

In Vietnam, American military and political leaders fell victim to hubris too, disparaging the North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong's will to fight, while not acknowledging the sheer courage it took to go against the most modern weaponry and technology the world had ever seen at the time with weapons that were hundreds, if not thousands of years old. 

In Afghanistan, the United States spent five years in the Korengal Valley fighting the locals there with some of the finest troops the nation had ever fielded, before eventually giving up and retreating in strategic defeat after the realization that the people there would never submit to outsiders, and after multiple examples of the local citizens using knowledge of the terrain to their advantage to attack coalition forces.

Time and time again, history offers lessons for those willing to listen. So, too, has Hollywood on this occasion.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.

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