I've Seen The Losers and Wanna TALK (SPOILERS!!!!!)

[Hippothoe]

*sad face*

That's it.

[dodger_winslow]

That's it.

Que?

[Caren]

Dude...Hipp?? What's up with that? You can't just leave us hanging what didn't you like?

[Caren]

I know Ive taken way too much time to respond but here I am finally catching up. FIrst....Rogue and his lack of a moral compass. What I've gotten from your post D is.......
Basically Rogue has no morals, at least in terms of human morals....he doesn't see right and wrong only as it pertains to the team dynamic. He can just justify selling out his team much in the same way he percieves Clay is selling out the team, yet he doesn't see fault within himself only in Clay, is that what you're saying?

[Laura]

So to Roque the rescuing of the Children was seen as an unnecessary alteration to their original mission, yet wasn't he the one who wanted the gunfire battle???? Clay did not address Roque directly when making the change in plans command up on the hill either, would Roque take that as a personal offense???

Roque NEVER seemed to trust Aisha, and seemed to need additional explanation of the plans as they were made. Yet Roque stayed with the group even once they got back to the USA. Why didn't Roque just disappear off into the sunset if he did NOT trust Aisha and Clay's motivations???????

Was there also a bit of a power struggle between Roque and Aisha, at least in Roque's mind???? Was he somehow threatened by Aisha's strength and possible power that Aisha may have over Clay because of the attraction that was there???

Did Roque loose faith in Clay, not just because of the altered mission, but because of the perceived weakness he saw in Clay because of the relationship that developed between Clay and Aisha?????

There was a feeling of Roque being second in command while they were on the ship, the tone and computers were switched back to mission business. Did that lead to some of the drift between Roque and Clay because Clay was NOT focusing on the mission as much as Roque might think he should be????

Was it the concern over Clay's attraction and therefore diversion with Aisha lead Roque to switch sides because he NOW saw Clay as a weaker leader than Max supposedly was?????

[dodger_winslow]

Basically Rogue has no morals, at least in terms of human morals....he doesn't see right and wrong only as it pertains to the team dynamic. He can just justify selling out his team much in the same way he percieves Clay is selling out the team, yet he doesn't see fault within himself only in Clay, is that what you're saying?

No. Not at all. Roque very much has a moral compass. His sense of right and wrong is, in fact, extremely strong, and also largely reflective of the military mindset, particularly the mindsets of men who gravitate to special forces. That moral code, however, is set to entirely different points of alignment than a civilian moral code would be (which can also be truly said of Clay); and how he judges things right or wrong, justified or unjustified, is dictated by a perspective his fellow team members don't share.

Let's say you've got three men sitting in a room. One of them is a high power executive for a Fortune 500 company. One of them is a devoted father who lives in the burbs. One of them is a decorated cop. They all have morals, but their moral codes are bound to be very different based on the lives they lead, and the personality traits they posses that have led them to those lives. And we make certain assumptions about each of those men and their moral codes based on nothing more than the sketchy description I've provided for them.

We very likely assume that the executive is an educated man who is a bit ruthless and would probably sell his mother if the price is right ... or at least his aunt. We just as likely assume the father drives a reasonable car and would sacrifice himself to save one of his kids. And that the decorated cop is probably the macho sort who might speed himself but he'll bust your ass if he catches you snorting coke.

All fair assumptions at first blush. But what if the executive is a self-made man with no education at all? What if he's so in love with his partner that he'd give up everything to save them? What if he's a spoiled rich kid who goes yachting more than he works? All of those version of the Fortune 500 executive are driven by VERY different motivations/backgrounds, and those differences are much more relevant to what they consider moral or immoral than their jobs or their status in the business world.

Likewise, what if that father is devoted to his kids but steps out on his wife at every opportunity? What if that father deals crack to support those kids he loves so much? What if that father has lost everything EXCEPT those kids and those kids are in some sort of ongoing danger? Again, VERY different ideas of what they'd consider moral or immoral, and those ideas would be far more motivating to their choices than the mere fact that they are devoted fathers and live in the burbs.

And to the third point, what if that decorated cop is on the take? What if he's a vigilante? What if he's a political animal with aspirations to hit the commissioner's job? What if he works in a ghetto district? What if he's a cop in the middle of bumfuck nowhere? All those version of the decorated cop would have different lines on what justifies (or can never justify) beating a suspect to get a confession, selling out a partner to get a promotion, or fucking with a civilian based on race, creed or color.

You see what I'm saying here?

And in that vein, Roque has very specific motivations and perspectives that are far more relevant to what he considers "right" or "wrong" by his own measure of morality than the fact that he's a member of a black ops military unit. For him? Fragging Clay for what he considers a mortal sin that leads to the destruction of the team? Is justice. Rescuing those kids because that's what Clay decides to do? Is following orders. Confronting Clay on the streets of Bolivia about the fact that he's losing the team with his vendetta against Max? Is being a friend.

So he absolutely has morals, and his code of conduct is dictated by those morals. It's just that his lines of demarkation between right and wrong are very different than yours or mine would be. And they're also very different from Clay's in many ways. But also very similar to Clay's in some ways.

That neither Clay nor Roque gave a second thought to anyone who was going to be collateral damage to that airstrike but the kids? Same moral line there. That both of them would die for their team and their mission? Same moral line. That Roque would consider fragging Clay a fair sentence for leading the team to destruction? That's actually also probably very similar to what Clay would consider fair ... but what they judge as "leading the team to destruction" is very different. That Roque is obviously willing to allow his teammates to be collateral damage to the deal he cuts to save himself once he feels the team is doomed? Absolutely different moral code there. Clay would NEVER do that. That if he felt betrayed by the man he considered his best friend, he'd be willing to kill that friend for the betrayal? Again, absolutely the SAME line there, as Roque and Clay are both willing to kill their best friends once they feel that best friend has betrayed them sufficiently to deserve to die.

So as that relates to Roque selling out the team ... Roque doesn't betray the team because he feels that it must be okay to do since he thinks Clay has done that. Roque betrays the team because, in his mind, there IS no more team. Clay has already destroyed the team.

By Roque's assessment, Clay let an outsider come in and split the team apart like an orange, so now you have five sections of an orange instead of one orange. And while being one section in a whole orange meant everything to Roque? Being one section of five sections means nothing to him.

And once the whole orange no longer exists, Roques idea of what is right or wrong concerning his actions as they affect all the different sections of that no-longer-an-orange? Changes too. Where he would have died to save the team, he's not going to die to save any of the sections of the team. It's every man for himself ... survival of the fittest. And he's the fittest. So he's going to cut the deal he has to cut in order to survive. In order to get his life back, and his identity back, and not get himself killed following Clay into yet another suicide situation. And while he clearly cares whether or not Jensen and Pooch become collateral damage to the deal he's cut to save himself (if he didn't care, he wouldn't have tried to convince them not to come on the mission), he doesn't care enough to endanger himself to make sure it doesn't happen.

And when it comes to Clay, based on the things he says after revealing himself a traitor to the team, Roque thinks he's in the right in punishing Clay for what Clay did to the team. He's putting a new twist on the long tradition of men fragging their superior officers for those officers proving so incompetent in their leadership (to the fragger's mind, if not to anyone else's) that they've gotten good men killed by their bad choices, or are going to get more good men killed by bad choices they intend to, or will likely make.

For military men, the chain of command, particularly in battle, is something you have to obey. The integrity of the entire military structure depends on it. So if the guy who outranks you, whose orders you HAVE to follow, keeps giving you bad orders that are going to get you killed, and he's not doing so for the sake of the mission, but rather doing so because he's either an incompetent fuck or someone whose putting his agenda before the good of his men? That makes fragging him self defense in the mind of many, including Roque. Just like putting a gun to the head of a murdering fuck the courts let off on a technicality nd pulling the trigger is self defense to some. To the courts? Both those acts are going to be considered illegal. But based on the moral structure of the individual? And based on the context in which those acts are performed? Those acts can very often be considered heroic by the same people who passed the laws to make them illegal.

All of that to illustrate this: Roque has a very specific moral code, and it is a man's moral code, not an animals. And across the span of the movie's events, the moral code he possesses, and the drivers that motivate him to judge things right or wrong, and how to respond to those things he judges right or wrong, doesn't really change. But what DOES change is the perspective Roque takes on his best friend and his team. And that change dictates a change, based on the same moral code he's always possessed, in how he acts. Which is how someone who would kill another man to survive himself, but would die for his team becomes someone who would kill all the men who used to be in his team because he no longer sees them as a team. And how someone who would die for his best friend becomes someone who actively wants to kill a man he once considered his best friend because that man, to his mind, has betrayed him and destroyed the one thing he MOST cares about: the team.

Dodger

[dodger_winslow]

So to Roque the rescuing of the Children was seen as an unnecessary alteration to their original mission, yet wasn't he the one who wanted the gunfire battle????

At the time that decision is made, who wants what is irrelevant. As their CO, it is 100% Clay's decision, and he makes it. But as their CO, he also bears 100% of the responsibility for the consequences of making that decision. So yeah, Roque might have thought that firefight was a grand idea and even wanted to do it because he's that much of an adrenaline junkie and he was bored. Or he might have thought it was a shitty idea that would get them all killed but what the hell, everybody's gotta die sometime and he wasn't going to be the punk who spoke up and said "are we sure that's a smart thing to do?". But the truth of the matter is, what Roque thinks or wants doesn't matter. It is CLAY who orders them in, which is why CLAY takes the vendetta against Max so personally ... because he not only hates Max for killing those kids, but also because he feels so guilty about leading his men into a mission that wasn't sanctioned that put them all on a governmental hit list ... all for nothing.

Clay did not address Roque directly when making the change in plans command up on the hill either, would Roque take that as a personal offense???

No way. Clay's the CO. If he'd looked to Roque for advice in that situation, Roque would have seen it as a sign of weakness on Clay's part.

He did, however, take personal offense to Clay pulling rank on him in the streets of Bolivia, where they were talking as friends, and he was trying to communicate his concerns to Clay about what Clay was doing, and why he was doing it. And he took offense to it because those choices are life-and-death choices for ALL of them, and they are being made outside the jurisdiction of military structure. Clay might outrank them as soldiers, but he doesn't outrank them as men. And Roque is trying to make that point to Clay. We aren't in the military any more. What you're doing is going to get all of us killed, and we [i]want to follow you because we trust you, and because we're used to following you, but the things you're doing here seem more like vengeance than a valid mission, and the men are getting restless with that. You're courting a rebellion against your authority because technically, you don't HAVE authority over us any more, and as a group, we don't WANT vengeance, we just want to get back home. You've got us in deep shit here, man; and you want to keep getting us in deeper instead of realizing we've gotten our asses kicked, so it's time to retreat. It's time to look out for your team and get us home safe. [/i]And in that situation, speaking man-to-man, as best friends not as commander and second-in-command, Clay pulls rank on him. Says you'll do what I say because I TELL you to do it, and I'm a Colonel and you're a Captain. So yes, Roque does take personal offense to that one, and he probably should.

Roque NEVER seemed to trust Aisha,

He doesn't. She's an outsider. Special ops teams trust no one but their own team members. Us against the world. And Aisha isn't one of them. None of the others trust her though either. The difference is, all the others trust Clay implicitly, so Clay bringing her to the table is enough for them to afford her whatever consideration Clay wants them to afford her. But that's not Roque's role, nor his personality. He's both Clay's second-in-command, and he is Clay's rival. So while he trusts Clay as a leader, his trust is not anywhere NEAR as implicit as Jensen, Pooch's and Cougar's ... something demonstrated in the graveyard scene by the fact that Roque is already pointing out times that Clay has chosen poorly in the past when a woman was involved.

and seemed to need additional explanation of the plans as they were made.

That's his job. He's second in command. He's Clay's checks-and-balances system. If he has concerns or issues, he is supposed to bring them up. And he clearly has concerns and issues.

Yet Roque stayed with the group even once they got back to the USA. Why didn't Roque just disappear off into the sunset if he did NOT trust Aisha and Clay's motivations???????

Roque's entire identity is defined by being a part of that team. Jensen and Pooch both have lives outside the team. Cougar is clearly a loner by nature, as all snipers inevitably are. And Clay is defined by being a soldier, not by specifically being part of this team. But Roque? Roque is all about the team. He can't walk away from the team because he doesn't agree with what they're doing or because he's beginning to question Clay any more than a son who defines himself by being part of his family can just walk away from that family because he doesn't like how they treat him or disagrees with how the father runs the family.

Was there also a bit of a power struggle between Roque and Aisha, at least in Roque's mind????

No. In Roque's mind, the power struggle is between he and Clay. He has no power struggle with Aisha. He hates Aisha because she isn't part of the team and he doesn't trust her. And he hates her even more because he knows Clay's most dangerous weakness is his taste in women. Clay only likes women who can (and apparently, want to) kick his ass or kill him. They are challenges to him, and he's drawn to them like a fly to honey. That's what the whole "she put a bomb in your car" thing was about. The idea that this is not the first time Clay's let a dangerous outsider close enough to hurt them because she's a woman he finds attractive, and the only kind of women he finds attractive are the dangerous ones. That's established as a pattern of behavior with him, and he never really seems to learn from it. Which is why Roque's reminding him of it. You remember the last time you let a woman you wanted to fuck get close to us? Remember what she did? He's putting it right up there in Clay's face that he's doing the same thing he always does, and it always ends badly for them. And Clay's saying Yeah, yeah, but it'll be different this time. But it never is different because that's Clay's weakness: women exactly like Aisha in terms of meaning him harm and him not seeing it for being distracted by his attracted to them.

So there's no power struggle between Aisha and Roque ... not in Roque's mind, at least. In his mind, the ONLY power Aisha has is the power Clay gives her, and he thinks Clay is being lead around by his johnson to be giving her any power at all, let alone enough power to pose a threat to the team.

Was he somehow threatened by Aisha's strength and possible power that Aisha may have over Clay because of the attraction that was there???

He wasn't worried about or threatened by Aisha's strength at all. He didn't trust Aisha because she wasn't one of them. And because she was trying to talk them into going on a suicide mission to benefit her. And he wasn't really worried about Aisha having power over Clay so much as he was worried about Clay having a blind spot when it came to women like her. So it wasn't that he thought Aisha would influence Clay particularly. Rather, it was that he knew Clay would be distracted by her and blind to dangers she represented that he'd otherwise see. So I guess, more than Aisha's power over Clay, he was worried about Clay's weakness over her.

Did Roque loose faith in Clay, not just because of the altered mission, but because of the perceived weakness he saw in Clay because of the relationship that developed between Clay and Aisha?????

He didn't lose faith in Clay. He feels Clay betrayed him. And worse, betrayed the team. And worst still, destroyed the team. TBT, I don't think Roque ever has faith in Clay. He isn't a faith kind of guy. Rather, he has respect for Clay. EARNED respect, because he has a great deal of experience with Clay that proves Clay is the right guy to get the team in and out of incredibly dangerous missions without suffering attrition. But he also has experience with Clay that proves Clay lets dangerous women he's attracted to get close enough to hurt him and the team. And he also has experience that Clay doesn't see dangers he would otherwise see when those dangers are brought to the table by a certain type of woman. And Aisha is exactly that kind of woman.

As far as the relationship developing, Roque's issue with that is how blind Clay will be to whatever danger Aisha represents. If he's not sleeping with her, he still has at least some objectivity. But once he's sleeping with her, what little he might still see in his blind spot isn't going to get seen. So for Roque, Clay's saying "This isn't the same thing as all those other volatile women I let get too close because I was fucking them. I'm not even fucking this one." And Roque's point is, "It is the same, and you will be." So when Aisha and Clay crawl in the van and it's apparent they've been fucking one another, Roque's saying "See? Told you so. It's not different, because you let those women get close to use before you were fucking them, too." And really, Clay doesn't have a leg to stand on now, but still, his stance is, "Well ... okay, ... I'm fucking her, but it's different anyway just because it is."

There was a feeling of Roque being second in command while they were on the ship, the tone and computers were switched back to mission business. Did that lead to some of the drift between Roque and Clay because Clay was NOT focusing on the mission as much as Roque might think he should be????

The drift between Roque and Clay was because Clay was focusing on the WRONG mission ... getting Max instead of getting their lives back.

Was it the concern over Clay's attraction and therefore diversion with Aisha lead Roque to switch sides because he NOW saw Clay as a weaker leader than Max supposedly was?????

No. Roque didn't switch sides until after his team was, in his mind, destroyed.

Look at it this way: You have a tray made of tiles. And that is a cool tray. You love that tray. Then someone drops that tray, and all the tiles break apart. They have totally destroyed your tray. So in fury, you stomp on some of the tiles, smashing them to smithereens. And the person who dropped the tray says to you, "Why are you destroying your tray?" And you say to them "I'm not destroying my tray. YOU destroyed my tray. These are just tiles that aren't worth anything now." Because what you loved? Was not the individual tiles. The individual tiles don't serve any real purpose for you. They're just trash now ... broken pieces of something you once loved, but something that's destroyed now. So when someone asks you, "What happened to that cool tray you used to love?" What you're going to tell them is "That dumb bitch so-and-so destroyed it." You're not going to think YOU destroyed it, because by the time you stomped on all those tiles? The tray was already gone.

And that's how Roque feels about the team. The team was still a team until they figured out Aisha was a traitor. But once they realize who she is? It's like breaking open an apple that looked fine on the outside and finding out that it is completely rotted out inside. She's destroyed the team from within, and she did so because Clay let her in despite all Roque's warnings that she was going to destroy the team if he let her inside. So for Roque? The team is destroyed. And Clay is the one who destroyed it. Even though Aisha is the worm who rotted the apple out, it was Clay who let that worm get in the apple in the first place.

So when Roque goes to Max to cut a deal? It isn't because Max is a stronger leader than Clay. It's because without an apple, Roque has nothing. He defined himself by being part of that apple. But the apple's destroyed now. And without an apple, it's only a matter of time before something out there kills him ... probably the something that is actively hunting him, but couldn't hurt him as long as he was part of an apple. But he's not longer part of an apple. So he calls the only other guy he knows who has an apple, and he says "If you let me be part of your apple, I'll give you the guy who destroyed my apple." And Max says, "Wasn't he your best friend?" And Roque says "He was until he destroyed my apple." So Max says, "What about the other pieces of your apple?" And Roque says, "What does it matter? They're not an apple any more."

Which is to say, no, Roque isn't trading up from a weaker leader to a stronger leader. He's simply trading up from someone with no apple to someone who still has an apple because when push comes to shove, all that really matters to Roque is that he's part of an apple. And it's just a cherry on top (of the apple) if he gets to stick it to the guy who used to be his best friend, but who's now just the guy who destroyed his apple ... because all that guy could think about was his worm.

Heh.

Dodger

[Laura]

So it was when they discovered who Aisha really was that was the final straw for Roque???

He had been right about her all the time, she was NOT to be trusted. Could he NOW free himself from the team because in his mind the team did NOT still exist??? OR did the team cease to be a team sooner in Roque's mind????

How could they have taken their lives back IF they had NOT gone after Max???? Wasn't Max to blame for them losing their lives to begin with??? OR was it really Clay because he altered their mission and it blew up in their faces, quite literally!!!!

There is symbolism in the team finding Clay and Aisha in bed, Clay literally and figuratively had his pants off, he was vulnerable, while Aisha still had quick assess to her gun. Clay just sat there, stunned, and Aisha reacted with the quick mindedness to get out of the situation as soon as she could. You are right, Clay was thinking with his Johnson!!!!

Did Clay finally realize that Aisha was lying to him then????

Did Aisha regain some of his trust back when she showed up and saved them???

She is NOW a volatile woman to Clay, as he exclaims, so will Clay's feeling for her change, will he NOW see her differently???? OR will it increase the attraction to her since that is his pattern????

[dodger_winslow]

So it was when they discovered who Aisha really was that was the final straw for Roque???

Well, Roque told Clay that it was after they found out she was Fahil's daughter that he cut a deal with Max. What I took off that reveal (both that he hadn't cut a deal before that and that he did cut a deal after it) was that before he found this out, he still considered the team something that could be saved. But after he realized who she was, he could see no way to save the team, so it was time to bail the sinking ship. So more than a final straw for Roque, I took it was more a point of no return in Roque's assessment of whether or not the team could be saved ... the difference between those being that the first implies the break point is a cumulative effect of Clay making one too many "wrong" choices for Roque to keep dealing with his "wrong" choices where the latter implies that whatever "wrong" choices Clay is making in Roque's eyes, there is still a chance the team can be saved so he isn't willing to bail on them if they are just wounded as compared to mortally wounded, but finding out who Aisha is changes that assessment, making him feel like no matter what he does, he can't save the team now, they are too far gone, their destruction is a matter of inevitability, so now's the time to bail so they don't take him down with them.

And speaking in terms of motivation, and what those motivations reflect about Roque's base character and his personal code of honor when it comes to loyalty to his team, the seemingly small difference of implication there is actually huge. As in, the-devil's-in-the-details huge. Because the first? Says Roque doesn't care enough about his team to keep fighting for them if they aren't doing things his way. That his loyalty to the team only goes so far, and then he's willing to wash his hands of them as "not worth it" and walk away, knowing that to do so dooms them.

And I don't think that is Roque at ALL.

I think Roque absolutely cares enough about that team to die for them if he thinks dying for them matters to the end outcome. Or even could matter to the end outcome. And I furthermore don't think there is anything Roque wouldn't do to save his team ... if they can be saved.

And that's where the difference between the first implication and the second lies. The "break the camel's back" interpretation implies Roque is both capable of being, and has been, broken by weight of something into betraying the team. And I don't think that's true. I don't think Roque can be broken by anything into betraying the team if for no other reason than because there is nothing more important to him than being part of that team, including his own life.

Where the "point of no return" interpretation implies he's not broken at all, but rather has become convinced there's nothing he can do is going to save the team. They are already too far gone ... dead men walking. Which means he's not turning his back on the team because they've pushed him too far, or done something he can't accept them doing, or aren't worth whatever sacrifice he might have to make to save them. Rather, he's walking away from the team because they are already dead in his eyes. There's nothing he can do to save them, including sacrificing himself to that mission. And because he now sees it this way (which he didn't before he found out who Aisha is) his priorities have to shift from saving the team, which can't be accomplished now, to saving himself, which can still be accomplished.

That's a typical soldier's dilemma. Do you stay with your dying buddy, even though you know there's nothing you can do to save him, just to be there with him when he dies? Or do you leave your dying buddy behind, because you know there's nothing you can do to save him anyway, and if you stay with him until he's actually gone, then there won't be anything you can do to save yourself either?

And Roque's a survivor. He'll die to save his buddy if his buddy can be saved. But once he decides that dying for his buddy still won't save that buddy? Roque chooses to do what it takes to survive himself.

There's a kind of military parable/story that reflects the dynamics of this choice as Roque is NOT making it, and that story's something they used in the memorial for the last two medal of honor recipients (Randy Shughard and Gary Gordon), both of whom insisted on going into a certain death scenario themselves to try and save a man who was deemed unsaveable, and both of whom died for doing so ... but they saved the man who couldn't be saved. I'm paraphrasing, but it goes something like this:

A soldier mortally wounded on the battlefield cries out to his buddies for help. Safe in a bunker, his buddy turns to the sergeant and asked for permission to go get the wounded soldier. His sergeant says no. You can't save him, and I won't have you die, too. So the buddy asks for permission again. And the sergeant refuses again, repeating that there's nothing the buddy can do to save the mortally wounded man. So the third time, the buddy doesn't ask, he just leaps out of the safety of the bunker and goes out onto the battlefield and gets the mortally wounded man. And in bringing the mortally wounded man back to the bunker, the buddy is mortally wounded, too. But he makes it back to the bunker, along with the man he went out to get who is, by this time, dead. And as the buddy is dying, the sergeant asks, "Why did you do this? Your friend is dead, and now you're going to die, too." And the buddy answers, "Yeah, but when I got to him, he wasn't dead, and his last words to me where, 'I knew you'd come.' "

THAT is the mindset of men who win the medal of honor for valor. And that is not Roque. Which is the whole point.

Well ... that and the fact that the dying buddy Randy Shughart and Gary Gordon went in to save? A "buddy", by the way, that neither man knew in more than passing? Is Mike Durant. Who lived because Randy and Gary couldn't leave him to die.

Which is also the point. Because the sergeant in the parable? By all measure of logic and common sense? Is right. Your buddy is already dead. And now you are, too. But the code of brothers-in-arms is that you leave no man behind. Period. So as antithetical to survival instinct as it sometimes is, and as indefensible as it often seems to those who are not in the military, and who have never been in battle, the point is still made: Roque cut a deal for himself because he assessed the team beyond saving, so he chose to leave the team behind and save himself. But the team survived, which proves that, despite Roque's assessment of their situation, they were not beyond saving. And because this is a story, and because virtually all stories are parables of one sort or another at their core, the way this plays out paints Roque and his choices as the choices of a villain instead of the choices of the one who made it back alive not because he wasn't a good soldier and someone who would have died for his team under most circumstances, but rather because, when his buddies were lying on the battlefield, wounded and beyond saving, he didn't live up to their faith of "I knew you'd come" by being the one who'd put not betraying that faith above his own survival.

Dodger

[dodger_winslow]

He had been right about her all the time, she was NOT to be trusted.

Now, see, I disagree with this. I don't think Roque is "right" about her at all. He isn't seeing something Clay didn't see. He isn't not trusting her because she didn't deserve to be trusted. He doesn't trust her for one reason and one reason only: she's an outsider. That's it. That's all he's going on. She's an outsider, and she wants them to do something dangerous for which she is willing to give them what they want in return even though she isn't willing to tell them what she gets out of them doing something dangerous. Ergo, she can't be trusted.

Well duh, is my response to that. Clay doesn't trust her on that level either. He just doesn't also distrust her simply because she's an outsider when everything he assess of what she's asking them to do and what she's willing to pay them to do it checks out as exactly what she represents it to be.

Which is to say that Roque not trusting Aisha from the get-go doesn't make him right by my assessment any more than someone sitting in one room saying about the walls in another room they've never seen that "The walls are not purple" is right. Because hello? The odds are really high that the walls wouldn't be purple. Most logical people would agree with that statement: that the walls are not purple. But they aren't telling you what color the walls ARE. They're just making a blanket statement about what color they aren't, and that doesn't constitute "right" in a "gosh, you were so right!" kind of way so much as it constitutes simply "not wrong" in a "well obviously, dude, would you like to put it out there that the world is not flat, too?" kind of way.

So in terms of the content of your statement above, rather than just the symantics of it, I don't consider Roque to be "right" about Aisha at all. Aisha is Fadhil's daughter. She never said she wasn't Fadhil's daughter. In fact, it is quite clear that she has her own reasons for wanting Max dead, and she's very up-front about the fact that she is not going to tell them what those reasons are. Her reasons for wanting Max dead are not part of the deal she is making with them. Her deal is very upfront: I'll finance you killing Max, and what you get out of the deal is revenge and a chance to clear your names in doing so. And she is absolutely 1000% true to that deal. She is financing them. She does get them back to the US when they were having trouble getting back. She isn't going to trade them to or for Max or otherwise betray them in some way that gets them killed in order to accomplish what she wants. And she isn't getting in their way of clearing their names while they are getting Max. All she does is not tell them she's Fadhil's daughter, which is something she told them up front wasn't something they were ever going to know: what her reasons were for wanting Max dead.

So being "right" about Aisha? Is not what Roque is. Roque is right about what Aisha already knows about The Losers, which is exactly why she doesn't tell them who she is and why she wants Max dead. Because she knows (and is right) that regardless of how genuine her offer is, and how much she is going to deliver exactly what she promises to deliver if they do what they say they'll do? None of that will matter to The Losers the second they find out who she is simply because who she is will make them so suspicious of her motivations and her trustworthiness that what she will or will not do becomes irrelevant.

Right now? We know next to nothing about Aisha except that she is Fadhil's daughter who loved him, and that she knows Max betrayed him and hates Max for it. And that Aisha has a hit order out on her from almost every covert governmental agency on the books ... something the losers know before they accept the deal, and that she never claimed otherwise. But we don't know (meaning the losers also don't know, as far as we know) if she was part of her father's business or maybe a covert operative who was framed up the same way the losers were, for perhaps the same reasons: doing the right thing when she was ordered to do the wrong thing. We don't know if she's as bad as her father was, or if she loved her father dearly but was working on the opposite side of the right/wrong line from him the way children often do with dramatically good/pad parents, loved or otherwise.

All we know is that she's smart enough to not tell the losers everything about her when the things she keeps to herself would clearly prejudice them against her in a way that would make anything else irrelevant. And that when the chips were down, and she was persona non gratis with the entire group, and they would have killed her on sight as a traitor, she's the one who showed up on their suicide mission and saved their asses when she could have just as easily, if not MORE easily, let them get killed while she went after Max who was, at that point, without the vast majority of his security forces and thus vulnerable.

Given that ALL she wanted out of this deal when she made it was Max dead, it says something very profound about both her character and her code of honor when it comes to brothers-in-arms that, at the time when she was most able to accomplish that mission, but to do so would have meant leaving the losers to get killed, she chose to save the losers ... men who would have, at that point, killed her on sight for no better reason that because who her father was, and what they THINK that means about her.

Could he NOW free himself from the team because in his mind the team did NOT still exist??? OR did the team cease to be a team sooner in Roque's mind????

I think my wording choices on previous posts are probably what led you here, so let me revise/clarify something I've probably said wrongly and/or unclearly prior to this: When Roque cuts a deal with Max to save himself, the team doesn't NOT exit so much as it is DOOMED. Prior to the reveal of Aisha's identity, he thinks he could save the team, which is what I mean when I say "the team exists for him." After the reveal of Aisha's identity, he doesn't think there is anything that can be done to save the team, which is what I mean when I say "the team no longer exists for him." So perhaps a better word for me to have used would have been "unsalvageable" rather than "dead" or "gone." While Roque thinks he can save the team, even if that means getting himself killed to do so, he is still part of that team. Once he thinks the team is beyond saving no matter WHAT he does, then he bails on that team to keep from going down with them. Because to him, the team as an ongoing unit no longer exist. There is no future for the team. They are a fatal wreck in slow motion, and the wreck has already started, and indeed is far enough along that the best he can do is jump clear himself because the wreck is past a point where it can be averted.

There's a Jack Handy quote I love that encapsulates this concept perfectly: If you ever drop your keys in a river of molten lava, just let them go because man, they are already gone.

That's Roque view on the team after the reveal of Aisha's identity.

How could they have taken their lives back IF they had NOT gone after Max????

Not Roque's job in the team to figure that out ... which is the crux of his problem with Clay going after Max. Because it IS Clay's job to figure that out. And Roque feels that, by focusing so blindly and exclusively on getting REVENGE on Max (not just getting Max, but getting revenge on him), Clay is not doing his job in trying to save his team from the fate he sealed for them in Bolivia with the orders he issued there. So for Roque, Clay is focusing on all the wrong things -- revenge for Max, sex with Aisha -- at a time when it is essential for the team's survival for him to focus on the right things ... those things being getting their names cleared and/or their lives back, whether doing that involves working with Max or against Max, whether accomplishing it requires them not kill Max or to kill Max. So Roque is telling Clay, "Straighten up, man! Your obligation is to the team. Quit fucking around, wasting time worry about other shit, like getting revenge and some chick's booty, and do what you, as the leader of this team, is obligated to do: get your men back home ... home being more than a place, home being a state of existence that does not have them at the top of everybody's hit list.

Wasn't Max to blame for them losing their lives to begin with???

Sure he was. And Roque knows that. But what he's telling Clay (and not necessarily wrongfully so) is that it doesn't matter who's to blame now. What matters is fixing it. They are in serious shit here, and it is Clay's job and responsibility to get them out of it. So he's saying forget revenge for the past and focus on solutions to the problem at hand. And if that solution involves doing something other than killing Max? Then do it. Because killing Max might be right and just and all that shit, and it might ease your conscience and soothe your troubled soul, but in the long run, it doesn't really do jack shit about getting us our lives back, especially when Max -- a LIVING Max -- might be the only one who can clear our names. And even if he isn't, he might be the only one who can protect us from those who are after us the same way the government used to protect us when we were black ops working for them. So killing him for revenge? Not necessarily the best choice. So you need to focus on what's best for the TEAM, and then do whatever it takes to save your team. THAT's your priority, not killing Max.

OR was it really Clay because he altered their mission and it blew up in their faces, quite literally!!!!

If Clay hadn't altered their mission, they would all be dead. The last point of Max's plan was to RPG their evac chopper ... something he did do because he didn't realize they weren't on it, and he would have done to cover his involvement in this ops even if Clay and the losers had done everything exactly the way Max ordered them to. So if they'd been on that chopper instead of the kids? They'd be dead. So despite the fact that Clay's orders to go in and save the children put them on the government's hit list, it also saved them from dying that day, on that mission, simply because it took them off the chopper that would have gone down with them on board, dead unknown black ops team unacknowledged but also unlauded by the government they thought they were serving instead of live hunted losers the government blame for doing something they didn't actually do.

There is symbolism in the team finding Clay and Aisha in bed, Clay literally and figuratively had his pants off, he was vulnerable, while Aisha still had quick assess to her gun.

That's actually one of the more intriguing choices they made with Aisha for me as, in combination with some other things they did, they are implying that Aisha really cares about Clay and has a real connection to him, but still holding out the possibility that she's simply feigning that and using him by making him THINK she really cares about him, and has a real connection to him. For my own read, I think it very likely, based on how the character is played, that she crawled into Clay's bed initially because that as the most effective way to control the team: through Clay. And she knows what Clay's weakness is, so I tend to think she actively exploited that weakness not because her attraction to Clay was such that she couldn't resist it, or that it cropped up organically apart and separate from her drive to kill Max, but rather that it was a tactic for her, and one that worked, but once she was in his pants, what she thought would be an easy manipulation turned into a much more complex relationship inthat Clay is much deeper than she took him to be, and much more like herself than she thought he was.

So while I think they did a great job of implying that Aisha's initial carnal attraction to Clay was not an onerous thing, but also not something that was done for reasons other than accomplishing her mission; I think they've also done a great job of implying that somewhere along the way, somewhere BEFORE Clay told her they went into the compound after the kids, what began as something she was doing to accomplish her goal became something that was going to get in the way of her goal off her having grown feelings for someone she didn't initially have any feelings for. And I tend to think they've played it this way to mirror Clay's own drive for vengeance against Max. That both Clay and Aisha are capable of doing very morally compromised things in order to achieve their goals, and their drive to get vengeance is so strong that something like an organic attraction to someone doesn't even register to them. 100% of their emotional resources -- BOTH of them -- are vested in a drive for vengeance, so neither of them had any real emotional attachment to the other to use as a jumping off point for sex that started -- again, for BOTH of them -- as a physical act to sate a personal need that was not emotional in nature ... an in-road to controlling the team for Aisha and a physical thing (and perhaps inroad to making sure she is what she says she is ... something he might think he's more likely to see if he's intimate with her than if he's not ... although in truth, I'm not sure Clay actually thinks that way so much as I would be holding out the potential for him to think that way because he's such a strategist in how he goes about things) for Clay.

You are right, Clay was thinking with his Johnson!!!!

I think Roque thinks that of Clay. And I wouldn't go so far as to say Clay's little clay didn't weigh in on the vote for him, too. But overall, I actually think Clay accepts Aisha's deal because he decides it is a good deal after he's examined it from every angle without finding a downside for them, being relatively optionless as they are when she makes the offer. And I think he integrates her into the team because he views her as an asset to the team and someone who ups their chances of surviving this near-suicide mission. So while I think Roque has a valid point in worrying that Clay might be damaging his own objectivity by crawling into bed with her, and that he's obviously correct in assuming that's where it's gonna go, I actually think he under-estimates Clay on this one, and that while Clay is more than willing to get physically involved with Aisha, he's also got his eye on the mission objective at the same time ... the same way Aisha is more than willing to use Clay and the losers to accomplish her mission of getting Max, but she's also got every intention of honoring their deal exactly the way they made it while/after doing so.

Did Clay finally realize that Aisha was lying to him then????

Another thing I loved so madly about how they played the Clay/Aisha card? When he finds out who she is, and she's holding her gun on his team/Jensen with an obvious willingness to kill them if necessary, even after just making it clear with the "we had to go in ... it was the right thing to do" reveal that whatever this thing started as, he's got real feelings for her now? He is still right there with his men, shooting to kill as she's diving for the tub. He doesn't just fail to interfere with his men trying to kill her as she tries to escape. And he doesn't just stand there an stay out of the situation one way or another. He actively tries to kill her, too. Which I think is PERFECT for Clay ... to play him both as a man who might be vulnerable to feelings for Aisha and a soldier who wouldn't ever knowingly let anyone get in the way of him protecting his men, even if he has feelings for them.

And I equally loved that, when Aisha asks him directly "Did you kill my father?" he has to actually think about whether he's going to lie to her or tell her the truth. You can see him assessing all his options and weighing each one to the pros and cons in his silence directly after her question. Then he tells her the truth. That he doesn't lie to her there? Is a HUGE reveal, to my mind, both of the man Clay is and how he feels about her, as well as how he feels about taking responsibility for the things he's done, both good and bad.

One of my favorite moments in the whole movie, hand's down, is that hesitation Jeff plays before he says, simply, "Yes." Fuckin profound.

Did Aisha regain some of his trust back when she showed up and saved them???

Aisha did more than gain his trust back. Aisha proved herself out one of them, and she did so directly after Roque proving himself out NOT one of them. They knew Roque would come ... and he doesn't. He leaves them on the battlefield to die to save himself. And they have no expectation at ALL that Aisha will come ... and she does, jumping right down into the lion's den with them, and does so even after their efforts to kill her, and in spite of the fact that letting them die buys her the best shot she is probably ever going to get of killing Max. But she chooses saving them instead, proving herself out what they always thought Roque was, and he turned out not to be.

She is NOW a volatile woman to Clay, as he exclaims, so will Clay's feeling for her change, will he NOW see her differently???? OR will it increase the attraction to her since that is his pattern????

I'm not sure where they're going to go with this, and I don't want to know until a sequel, if there is a sequel, is made. That's why I won't read the books yet ... because I loved this movie too much to spoiler myself for any that might come in the future. But as for Clay's feelings for her changing, I think his feelings for her are that she's one of them, and she's proven that. But he also knows --- just like he knew when he originally took up with her, based on her unwillingness to divulge her reasons for wanting Max dead, that she was hiding something that might potentially bite him in the ass at some future date -- that he can't afford to wholly trust her. And he knows this because she told him as much.

Once again, she's very upfront with him about the parameters and limitations of their deal when she makes the statement about the whole "you're the one who pulled the trigger on my dad" conversation not being over yet. She's putting him on notice, so there's no possibility for him to think otherwise, that there's still something about her that might bite him in the ass at some future date. She's being upfront with him, making sure she doesn't betray him by letting him trust her when SHE knows he can't trust her yet, because she's not sure how to deal with the revelation that he's the one who killed her father. So she's not dealing with it yet. But she doesn't want him to think her not dealing with it means she's over it, or forgiven him for it, or forgotten it. Because she hasn't. And she's stand-up enough to make sure he KNOWS that ... which is exactly why he's so into her. Because as members of the same team, he has to be able to trust her. And the fact that she'd mark off the one place where he CAN'T trust her so he knows its there? Proves to him there aren't other places that will crop up in the future as landmines she knows are there but just didn't bother to tell him. Which is as close as he'd ever going to get to an apology for not telling him she was Fadhil's daughter ... a betrayal of omission she made when they were not compatriots, and thus she wasn't wrong in doing what she did. But even not being wrong, and thus feeling she owes him no real apology, she does feel a need to assure him that, given how their relationship is something now it wasn't then, she'd tell him upfront about even such thing as might make him not trust her, just as he'll tell her upfront that he did kill her father, even though it would have been so much easier to say that he didn't.

The code of brothers-in-arms. I can't promise I'll never shoot you; but I can promise I'll never shoot you in the back. And given the betrayal Clay just suffered from Roque, someone he would have NEVER thought would sell him out to the enemy in the name of surviving himself, that's an important thing for Clay to hear from her. Much more important, in fact, than any other kind of profession of love or loyalty.

Dodger