82nd Airborne Division

“Sometimes you have to pick the gun up to put the gun down” -Malcolm X. I’m certain that every sane person reading this has never wanted to literally kill someone. We all joke around saying “I’m going to kill you!!” but obviously, we never actually do. What if that actually meant something? What if we really are going to kill you? This has happened many times in this course of human events; and it is by no means wrong to have such serious thoughts. This is not only on the singular person scale,…

The Bourne trilogy, specifically Bourne identity focuses on man whom suffers from retrograde amnesia. The film starts with a man found floating in the Mediterranean Sea with two gunshots wounds in his back. He is rescued by nearby fishermen’s, and on this boat happened to be a doctor. The doctor finds and extracts two bullets from Jason’s back and small microchip that was lodged in his hip. After waking up he spends the rest of the film trying to regain his memory given that one cue. The cue…

“Ronald Reagan owned the first eight years of the 1980’s. He set the national agenda, defined most of the terms of the national dialogue, and dominated what passed for national political debate… he had more pervasive impact on the country than anyone since Franklin D. Roosevelt” (Reagan 1). So when Reagan began supporting the Contras during the Nicaraguan Civil War it was a major political topic. The civil war in Nicaragua became a personal mission for Reagan. Reagan saw the Contras as freedom…

In 1948, within NSC 10/2, George Kenna surmised that covert actions are “planned and conducted that any U.S. government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorized persons and that if uncovered the U.S. Government can plausibly disclaim any responsibility for them” (Johnson 2007). This statement entrenched a high standard for future covert operations to strive to remain clandestine, which is a seemingly improbable feat to achieve. Indeed, most covert operations have the intention to…

On April 18th, 1961, CIA paramilitary groups landed on a beach in the Bay of Pigs in Cuba. Initially, they overwhelmed the local militia, however, within a few days, they surrendered and were put into Cuban prisons. On April 21st, President John F. Kennedy acknowledged the failure of the mission and laid the blame on himself. However, I argue that by evaluating the Bay of Pigs Invasion through the lens of the cognitive approach, we will be better able to understand the failure of the mission and…

ONE morning in the mid year of 1999, 47 individuals were captured in the Texas Panhandle town of Tulia and accused of managing cocaine. From the begin, the arraignments ought to have seemed suspicious. The majority of those captured were dark; in truth they spoke to one in each five dark grown-ups in Tulia. Is it safe to say that it was truly dependable that such a noteworthy extent of a little group were merchants? What's more, who were they managing to? They were blamed for managing in…

An epigraph appearing at the start of The Hurt Locker states ‘The rush of battle is often potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug’ – Chris Hedges, this quote sets the scene for the movie as we see the negative consequences that war has on the people involved. Kathryn Bigelow has directed the two war films, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty in which she has a very clear style which can be analysed to make meaning of the texts. Both texts explore the idea of voyeurism and are focussed on…

It was not until 1986 that the 159th Special Mission Battalion became the 160th aviation group (airborne) and received their own unit crest. In 1987, the 160th aviation group played a role in Operation Earnest Will, which helped to protect a Kuwaiti ship during the conflict of the Iran and Iraq War. In the year 1988, the 160th became the very first…

Transnational terrorism consists of individuals and or groups who organize acts of violence across national boundaries. These individuals are not native to the country in which they attack but are the ones responsible for the missions. For example, on September 11, 2001 the was carried out by 19 Islamic radicals who were members of the infamous terrorism group Al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda was managed and controlled by a Yemeni Kindite national known as Osama bin Laden who was known as the leader of…

From Nicaragua to Guatemala, The Philippines to The Middle East, U.S. covert operations have played a significant role in past conflicts. The implementation and impact of these operations can be seen in many different instances, but the most noteworthy occurred during the Vietnam War. From 1963 to 1975 The CIA, Military Assistance Command, Vietnam(MACV), and other defense and intelligence agencies planned and conducted countless counterinsurgency and covert operations in Vietnam and the…