Damn…our guys in Iraq have to clean up with baby wipes! No coed showers for them!
But a good parallel exists with the bugs that can fire plasma jets from their asses-they resemble those Scud missles.
Starship Troopers is my favourite book, and, although I loved the movie, it fell short of my expectations - the biggest of which, naturally, is that the Mobile Infantry weren’t hopping across the blasted landscape in powered armour raining Fire Pills on the Arachnids and scorching them with their flamethrowers.
In the book, Rico spends a lot of time explaining how he sees human society as it relates to warfare and its opponents. The Arachnids are an intelligent and aware enemy (or, at least the leadership caste are) willing to at least call a ceasefire; part way through the book, they had already done so with the other alien race in the novel, a humanoid species known as the “Skinnies.”
The movie, however, portrays them as so animalistic and uncompromising that the only reasonable solution is to wipe them out of existence.
I don’t think we can say that this situation in Iraq is so black-and-white. The Iraqis fight not with animalistic fury, but with motivation based on what they have to gain or lose. Sure, the Republican Guard and Hussein himself will lose everything if the conflict goes badly for them, but the Kurds and the Shiites would probably be better off calling a truce or even joining the coalition forces to oust them.
There is one scene in the book (not in the movie), however, that I find eerily similar; in fact, it’s the one Dopers around here have probably heard me quote the most.
During Operation Royalty, in which the MI are trying to capture a Brain and force it to the surface, Rico is observing as a cadet officer while the MI encircles and collapses a set of Arachnid tunnels so they can seal off the main passageways and narrow their search.
Without warning, a huge mass of Arachnids well up from the ground, overwhelming the MI positions (this is where the phrase “Bugs, Mr. Rico! Zillions of 'em!” comes from), and the MI have their hands full shooting, fighting, and blasting as many of them as they can…
… until Rico makes the astute observation that none of them are armed. They’re not Warrior bugs, but Workers, and they aren’t fighting back. The Brain had compelled them to surface in vast numbers to confuse and overwhelm the enemy in a desperate bid to secure time to escape the trap that we had set for it.
Looks like “Human Shields” aren’t a new idea after all…
Normally I’d say it’s easy to draw parallels with war, but it’s probably especially so with this movie. The enemy is basically an enemy, and nothing more. You can assign to it whatever personality you see fit.
As for co-ed showers, I’m sure there are a few civilians, at least, who have taken up that cause during the war . . . 