Rogue One - Interview with Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Cavanaugh

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Star Wars Film Festival where the lore hounds your We talked a lot about the way that you get together a coalition like the rebels versus a coalition that I wouldn't even call it a coalition, a banality of evil bureaucracy like the empire. Really, really fascinating topics.

[00:01:41] I think hopefully he'll be a recurring guest because he is a very smart guy.

[00:01:45] Yeah. So you can join us in conversation there. All those links are in the show notes. Don't forget, as always, stick around to the end of the podcast for programming notes about all the other podcasts we have coming. And for a reminder about our Patreon where you can get everything ad free, early bonus stuff, you got everything. And David's true detective detective notebook is one of those things.

[00:03:02] We gotta always plug that.

[00:03:04] Yeah.

[00:03:04] So anyway, David, I think. Yeah, not even close. It's funny. I joined the army when I was 18 years old. So I quite literally had never had a beard in my whole life.

[00:04:23] This is the Hollywood movie. It's meant to put butts in seats. It's a space opera. It's entertainment, but at the same time of all in my mid to late 30s, standing in front of rooms of 18, 19, 21 year old kids. And just that time gap,'s really important to be able to stand on that common ground with anybody. And Star Wars is as good as it gets, because even people that don't know anything know who Yoda is, right? Like, I mean, at the very base,

[00:08:21] it's almost like it's one of the last pop culture platforms

[00:08:26] that really has touched everybody. are profound and moving at times and really can motivate action or make us feel something or make us connect to something. And so I think that is when I heard you and Anthony talking about the Westeros universe. I was like, that was a complete light bulb moment for me. It was like, yes, here's even a more practical

[00:09:41] explainer, you know, connectivity to real world issues.

[00:09:45] This guy is talking about,

[00:09:46] we definitely have to talk to him.

[00:09:48] And I'll just plug really quick. being, I guess, wrong in our ideology right away. Do you find that that is part of your use of Star Wars and Westeros in examining military conflict? The best encapsulation, and I can't remember the writer, but when he was talking about

[00:11:00] the value of science fiction and fiction more differently in order to contest it in the national security space. You can apply that in Tony Gilroy to do some directing on it or to clean it up a little bit because the original, they weren't happy with the original cut of it. And there's a trailer, the very first trailer, there's a whole bunch of voiceover with monolith more or less, or everybody sees the world the same way. But the reality is that war is for the highest stakes. And so even though, even those that are on the same side,

[00:15:04] so to speak, will have immense disagreements I would ask for like a sampling of responses and these are cadets so they're they're type a and their hero personality folks so they're all you know they're all rushing the gunman that sort of thing you know and i asked them a serious question and i didn't want any of them to respond to this it was a rhetorical question but. If don't really get more than that you know and Yeah, you know even extremists Have a logic to them and I'll hang some meat on that what I mean by that is

[00:17:42] Little over a decade ago

[00:17:46] There was a moment where to, you know, to the to the empire that that kills whole planets in a single fight, you know, a single shot, right, you know, being an extremist would probably be a reasonable reaction. I mean, I, some of the first looks of Rogue One before it went through

[00:19:00] rewrites and reshoots did show rebel X wing pilots under in of we can't get all these people to talk to each other and come up with a common goal. And when you look at Star Wars as a full history, you look at this rebellion and how it becomes a new Republic and they have an incredibly hard time and an unsuccessful time ultimately, creating a functional military and a functional government.

[00:20:22] Can you talk about sort of how one approaches willing to pay to achieve it. And if the value of the object is high enough, there's nearly nothing you won't do. And the second world war, the United States allied itself with Uncle Joe Stalin. We made peace with Stalin who starved the Ukrainians a decade before the war, conducted

[00:21:43] purges of the top ranks of his general officers he's More or less openly hostile at odds with hostile to right, you know if you deem a planet killer Such a threat

[00:23:00] Who you know who wouldn't you pair with at that point if you know the enemy of the of my enemy is is my friend

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[00:24:14] today. That's a free pair of socks with purchase at a-l on some level, there are some things that are immaterial as to time.

[00:25:42] Cover and concealment matters and.

[00:26:47] to think of two guys fighting one sword, one shield each, right? That's basically equal, more or less, right?

[00:26:50] When we get to the first world war, that's done with.

[00:26:53] And so you have to find an ability to use the natural terrain to your advantage and

[00:27:03] find a way to move through that advanced firepower. that. There's a reason why every war movie you've ever seen features a squad that's like a collection of of oddballs from different locations. Because if you went into the United States Army, a focus on people who make it into the history books and the focus on boots on the ground. And for for you, you know, it does rogue one ring truer for that. Yeah, I mean, this is sort of the, you know, in historical circus circles, they refer to

[00:29:44] this as the great man theory of history. boats, the flat bottomed boats that were used down in the bayou and in Louisiana, swamp boats in essence, that they had to bring over to the United Kingdom in order to make the landings. And so I really, I loved that about this film too, you know, because obviously when we're talking about Star Wars, so much focuses on the Jedi and this, these sort of magical knights.

[00:32:23] Speeds with the words with laser swords.

[00:32:26] Yeah. A television show following Deidre Miro and how she interfaces with, you know, the the planetary governor

[00:33:41] and how he's ordering his troops around, sort of deploying his forces there.

[00:33:45] But this idea or then on the Al Donny thing. the entirety of the universe into submission and order and stability and on some level at sort of a At a remove that makes a lot of sense but You know, there are so many chinks in the in the in the Empire's armor. So the rebels

[00:35:04] Have almost this

[00:36:05] philosopher of war, his description of a theoretical,

[00:36:10] idealized war. And Clausewitz was such an interesting figure in the sense that he was first on the battlefield at age 12, and

[00:36:16] fought through all of his even pre adolescent life through his

[00:36:22] adult life. And much of that on this call have children. We know what that is. We can never achieve some idealized state of life.

[00:37:41] And the same thing is true of warfare.

[00:37:44] Even in the real world, it doesn't jive with reality. Like, you know, it has to be tethered to reality in some way. There's a great scene in the in TV in the Andor where Luthan is asking Cassian, how did you how do you get in? And he's like, they're so arrogant that they can't even believe a guy like me would just

[00:39:02] walk in.

[00:39:03] I just have to look the part and because. It's a great context to add.

[00:40:22] I wanted to bring in the way that the empire treats the pilot. And then the empire is doing it for Tarkan's ego, right? And for Krennic's ego. So yeah, it's it's super interesting to contrast that. I mean, if you want to win converts and on some level, that is.

[00:41:44] Look, Sun Tzu is the most quoted text on strategy in the world, because it's basically sort of the by low cell high

[00:42:48] idea, but it is true when it comes to modern war. On some level, that's the point. So I served for a year in South Korea and north of Seoul, basically on the DMZ. And cynics have pointed out that the

[00:42:58] American military presence in South Korea is basically's going on here. And to me, that's just unbelievable. I just cannot understand the level of that decision-making because granted, there's probably some other backup locations

[00:44:22] that have all of these plans members, these are people in uniform, these are not civilians. If what I'm pointing out is that in that same scenario that Krennic finds himself in, right, there are variants of it where I think it makes sense

[00:47:02] to actually fire upon people wearing the same uniform.

[00:48:09] right now or in any of the other services, you're not going to find gung-ho types. A lot of them are there because they're looking to pay for college or get a job or it was my ticket to getting out

[00:48:16] of Nowheresville. However, what I will say into Rogue One, you know, spending Cassian and or spending, you know, he's a captain, right? He's a cash spending a captain spending jinner. So spending K2SO. That of consider in your work? I mean, I think that that's the hardest part about all of this because you know, the military is granted, the military is a profession, you know, like I'll start there

[00:52:08] order to defend society. There's an old phrase, the military's purpose is to kill people and break things. No, it's not.

[00:52:12] Killing people and breaking things is, first of all, it's not

[00:52:14] even a purpose. That's a task. That's a physical thing that you

[00:52:19] might do. The military's purpose way to get around it. The nuclear weapon use in Japan killed, instantly Pacific and in Europe was, yeah, it was, and it was going to keep grinding on. So I'm not, I'm not giving any, John, you ask, you pose a wonderful question. The reason that my answer is meandering is because there is no sort of simple, um, answer.

[00:55:00] Yeah, there's no clean answer. And we're imposing peace and stability as opposed to forming a structural, a sociological structure in which society can have some, have tools at its disposal to protect itself or to do things. Because you can think of uniformed service too, not just fighting arms, but uniformed service in terms of

[00:56:24] natural disaster, in terms of, you know, you're you raised Luthan and Cassie and both of them. So that's that's sort of the pointy end of the spear, right? But but the other thing that that comes out in Rogue One is warfare's cost to society. So the very first thing that we see in the film is a child running away from war.

[00:57:45] And of course, part of that first opening sequence

[00:58:51] Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, who are cold and not clothed. You know, the world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the so many of us wearing the uniform can see that. Well, that was a... I feel like John and I had this joke that we're like, oh, we can get this podcast done in an hour. And I think we're going to try and actually hold ourselves on this account because you're here with us. But I feel like this could go on

[01:00:23] for quite a much longer and we could span out into so many questions. I have a dozen unanswered Just really quick, what are three different pieces of media that you're consuming right now? What are shows, movies, books, anything you're listening to that folks might find interesting? Or that you've recently watched or whatever. Oh gosh, last night I watched the first episode of the Mr. and Mrs. Smith series.

[01:01:40] So good, isn't it?

[01:01:41] It, yeah, it's actually like, it's not overblown.

[01:01:45] I'm super impressed.

[01:02:46] with this. I hope we could have you back on again in the future. There's a lot that we could talk about. John, any parting thoughts? Yeah, I really appreciate that Eisenhower quote. You have me

[01:02:52] thinking now, and I want to prepare myself for the next time we talk to you. I think it'd be good to

[01:02:58] talk to you around when we hit episode nine, where we talk about the New Republic a little bit more,

[01:04:01] right now, but she'll be back. I know you're working on something with the Oscars with her.

[01:04:04] So stay tuned on that feed.

[01:04:05] Probably Howard movie review is also on a break,

[01:04:08] but we will be covering severance with them later in the year.

[01:04:12] As for us, you can check out our weekly coverage of True Detective

[01:04:16] coming out just after the episode airs, thanks to screeners.

[01:04:19] Every single week, you can get the the detective's notebook

[01:04:23] that David puts together.

[01:04:24] If you as a Patreon subscriber benefit. Yep. Mm hmm.

[01:05:26] with of men, a chapter. It's just called of men and where we're going for it. We're talking about all of those crazy guys in Middle Earth in the first age. Finally, you and Brandon,

[01:05:34] David, are doing coverage of Masters of the Air. You did one already on the first two

[01:05:39] episodes and you'll be doing a wrap up at the end. I know you just mentioned to Matt

[01:05:43] that you might have him back on for something at the end of the season. Well, we'll keep you posted on anything else we might cover. We have a few things on the consideration block. For now, David, can you give a big thank you to our Patreon lore masters? I would love to. I would love to say thank you to Sam Martian, Mark H, Michael G, Michelle E, David W, Brian P, Nick W, SC, Peter OH, Bettina W, Adam S, Nancy M,

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