"It's Kind of Like the Apollo Program"

Rating: Null/10 (6 May 2018)

"12 Strong" tells the true story of the courageous special forces unit ODA 595, who arrived in Uzbekistan on October 16, 2001, then engaged in battle with the Taliban in the first major confrontation of the American the military combat troops in Afghanistan in the post-9/11 world. In its handling of the dramatic material, the film owes a great debt to the "Why We Fight" propaganda films of Frank Capra during World War II, especially in one of the film's captions that claims with no small sense of hyperbole that "this was one of the U. S. military's most stunning achievements."
The film opens with the familiar string of events that spawned the "war on terror": the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, Nairobi in 1998, the battleship Cole in 2000, and, of course, the tragic events of September 11, 2001. There is an interesting sequence of still frames with Vladimir Putin and captions suggesting to his counterpart George W. Bush that "something big" was being planned shortly before 9/11.
The balance of the film depicts the brave Green Berets of ODA 595, who become "horse soldiers" after linking up with a medieval-style warlord, "General" Abdul Rashid Dostum, with the goal of capturing the strategic city of Mazar-i-Sharif. Following the assassination of the Afghan Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud, there is a power vacuum in the Afghan leadership, with Al-Qaeda filling the vacuum. Only a miraculous victory at Mazar-i-Sharif will stem the tide of Al-Quaeda.
The film's action builds to the horrific fight that took place in the strategic Tiangi Gap, the choke point en route to Mazar-i-Sharif. It was there that Captain Mitch Nelson, his fellow Green Berets, and the small contingent led by General Dostum were able to fend off the Al-Qaeda, with assistance from American air strikes. This was the scene in which Chief Petty Officer Hal Spencer, severely wounded by a suicide bomber feigning a surrender, had imagined would be an experience that would be "kind of like the Apollo program." But this non-conventional war that later turned into a hopeless quagmire bore no resemblance to a space launch. As observed by the grizzled warlord Dostum, "there are no 'right choices' here. This is Afghanistan."
Despite the heroics of the horse soldiers, America's war with Afghanistan has continued in a perpetual struggle lasting more than fifteen years with no voice in the decision-making process from the American people. While the screenwriters offer a few token references to Afghanistan as the "graveyard of empires," the true nightmare of American involvement is never conveyed in this stirring, "feel good" film.
The reality of the Horse Soldiers was that the courageous men of ODA 595 returned home to no fanfare. While a statue of a horse soldier was dedicated on the site of the new World Trade Center in 2012, the true face of the war is not the men of of ODA 595, but that of Pat Tillman, a genuine hero killed accidentally by his own men while serving with futility in Afghanistan, graveyard of empires.