I was flipping satellite channels tonight, and I ran across the supposedly classic "The Day The Earth Stood Still." I'm kind of appalled that this was some of the best that the fifties had to offer for SF, because it seemed pretty schlocky to me, but that's from someone speaking from the century of the Jetsons.

Anyway, it did occur to me that there were some interesting parallels between it and what we're attempting to accomplish in the Middle East.

There's a comments box below. Discuss.

Hmm. U.S. in the role of (peace-bringing, yet stern) Klaatu, Iraq in the role of (warmongering) humanity?

There is a big display of power right at the beginning, demonstrating the ineffectiveness of the local weaponry and tactics. As soon as a weapon is used, it is destroyed, utterly, helped along to that end by its having been deployed with little regard to vulnerability, appropriateness of the weapon to the task, etc. All this with a minimal exercise of Gort's [the Pentagon's] full power.

Klaatu [the U.S.] first tries a peaceful approach [sanctions, inspections, U.N. diplomacy] to get Earth [Iraq] to behave responsibly. When that fails, Klaatu [the U.S.] stages a minimally-damaging demonstration [pin-point targeting] of the alien federation's [Coalition military's] destructive capacity.

(This part hasn't happened yet, but...) Klaatu [the U.S.] is seriously injured by a lucky shot [chemical/biological weapons attack], which nearly brings about the immediate destruction of Earth [Iraq] via Gort's [the Pentagon's] pre-programmed response ["nukes for N/B/C" deterrence doctrine].

At the last moment, Patricia Neal [Dennis Kucinich in drag] yells "Klaatu barada nikto" ["Stop this war now!"] and...oh, wait, that's just plain silly...

Posted by T.L. James at April 4, 2003 10

I find your implied slur on the Jetsons a bit disturbing, as it was clearly one of the finest examples of emotionally complex psychodrama ever to emerge from the brilliant minds of the Hanna-Barbera multinational conglomerate. Without H-B we wouldn't have such wondrous and intellectually stimulating cartoons as "Scooby's All-Star Laff-A-Lympics" and "Josie and the Pussycats". [cough gag splutter]

Here's my take on The Day the Earth Stood Still as current events; it was too long to post here.

Klaatu is the very model of a modern special forces soldier. Gort is an AC130 gunship.

Sent by essentially isolationist masters they warn the primitives that it's getting to be a small universe and they shouldn't disturb the peace of people who can obliterate them.