What country....?
It never does say, but any idea what country Doug's dad was in?
shareIt's been a while since I've seen, but I'm somewhat certain that the flags being used were for the United Arab Emirates.
sharec mon its sooooooo easy, what arabic country had problem whit usa in the 80s, what country had a president dressed as a military, what country did the usa bomb and killed one of the president stepdaughter,
its LIBYA
More likely its supposed to be Iraq under Saddam. The movie was made with the assistance of the Israeli Air Force (which bombed Iraq's nuke facilities in the early 80s), so the selection of this particular country would make even more sense.
Libya makes sense as well, but its not in the Middle East, and the movie makes it pretty clear that the country is located in that region rather than North Africa.
The country was supposed to be Libya, not Iraq. At the time of Iron Eagle's release, Saddam Hussein was still a henchman of the USA. They never specified the country's name in the movie, but judging from the hat insignias and the political situation of that time, who else could it have been?
shareDefinitely Libya. The Dad is shot down over the Mediterranean at the start.
sharealso doesn't chappy make a comment about dog paddling across the mediteranean and getting picked up by a greek fishing boat? definitely libya. and isreal did not bomb Iraq's nuke facility, that was Iran
shareNo, Israel did execute an airstrike against an Iraqi nuclear facility at Osirak, in 1981. And, Chappy "got picked up by an Egyptian trawler."
Bob
the only thing that matters is that it's a BAD country and everything in it needs to be destroyed!!! i wonder why reagan and rambo didn't destroy this country again in the sequel (no offense, i really love rambo... reagan not so much).
shareIt's Libya.
- The country is on the Mediterranean coast.
- Doug's dad is shot down while conducting Freedom of Navigation exercises, which we ran off the Libyan coast throughout the eighties and were a constant source of tension.
- While very few countries would dare to attack U.S. aircraft in international airspace, the Libyans did exactly that twice during the eighties (and got their ass handed to them both times), exactly as we see at the beginning of the film.
- This movie came out in '86, the same year we conducted airstrikes against Libya in retaliation for a terrorist attack they'd conducted in Europe.
Course, there's always a hostile country somewhere in the Middle-East the U.S. is at odds with, so it doesn't really matter, does it? If you were watching this in the eighties, it was Libya. In the nineties, Iraq. Today, Iran...
Don't forget that when Col. Blackbird shows Doug a map it's a real map of the real Libyan coast. That coupled with the Freedom of Navigation exercises (which the US really did conduct against Libya in the 80s) and Libya actually having the gull to attack said US planes (which happened twice) plus having no diplomatic relations with the US, being on the Mediterranean coast and near Egypt pretty much seals the deal it is being Libya.
share[deleted]
True dat; the Barbary Wars. The leader of Tripoli (now capital of Libya) was conducting piracy against occidental ships in the Mediterranean, including Americans; the President (either Washington or Jefferson I believe) ordered the infant U.S. Navy to the Med in retaliation. The line in the Marine Corps' anthem "To the shores of Tripoli" is a hommage to that battle.
I think there was a similar conflict with neighboring Algiers (today Algeria) a couple years later as well, but I don't remember how that ended.
"Sorry. I meant drop dead, comrade."
It was President Jefferson during the First Barbary War. But, the U.S. had been paying protection money to Tripoli since President Washington, the same as other European countries. It was when Tripoli asked for an increase in the money (which the U.S. refused) that the war started. The Second Barbary War was a joint US-UK action (mostly the Royal Navy) in 1815, with the end of the Napoleonic Wars. With peace restored in Europe, the Royal Navy concentrated on ending the piracy problem instead of tolerating it while fighting more serious adversaries like France.
shareWe bombed Libya in 1986 because of Pan Am Flight 103 being blown up over Lockerbie, Scotland.
Libya was at odds with the U.S. from 1968 until well into the 21st century so I can't fully agree with your last statement.