Link between Frank Herbert's "Dune" and Iraqi military tradition? Arrakis. Dune. Desert Planet. Iraq. Sand dunes. Desert nation. "Fedayeen"= feared Iraqi paramilitary group that uses the desert well. "Fedaykin" = feared Arrakis/Fremen crack troops that uses the desert best. Did Herbert draw much of his trilogy from the Iraqi "story"? Am I way late with this comparison and just missed it elsewhere?
The spice must flow. It's a valid, IMO, comparison. However, Dune is far older than this conflict! I can't recall the exact publication dates of the original books (70's?), but certainly a parrallel between Arrakis and the Middle East as well as Spice and Oil can easily be drawn.
Indeed, the spice/oil must flow...interesting! No, I agree that Dune was written a long time ago; I'm assuming that the Iraqis have used the term "Fedayeen" for a period dating back before the Dune series... What other parallels can be drawn...?
I got a guy here whose telling me that "Fedayeen" is an Islamic term that was also used by the psychos who did Munich in 72; supposedly means "commandos" or "freedom fighters" in Arabic... So its an Islamic tradition, and not specifically an Iraqi one, that Herbert is likely drawing upon...
The Fremen are clearly Arabic in nature, while the Bene Jeserit (sp? It's been so long...) are painfully Catholic. The bigger question than "who is Chani" is "who is Paul Atraides" in this parallel!
From Terrorism:Assassins to Zealots by Sloan and Anderson: Fedayeen or fida'iyin "one who offers slef-sacrifice, that is, one who offers himself sacrificially in a holy struggle. This name has been adopted by at least four different groups in the history of terrorism. 1. The Isma'ili Fedayeen. In the 11th and 12th centruy.... 2. The Fedayan-i Islam. An Iranian terrorist group founded by the Shi'ite junior clergyman Navab Safavi in 1944 to kill Iranian intellectuals and politicians held to be responsible for the decline of Islam in Iran.... 3.The Palestinian Fedayeen. Wit the rise of Palestinian terrorist and guerilla attacks on Irael...the term fedayeen came to be used by Palestinians to designate guerrilla fighters attacking Israel without being exclusively reserved for the fighters of any single Palestinian group.... 4.The Fedaya-e Khalq-e Iran. The "People's Fedayeen of Iran" was a Marxist guerrilla group that split from the Iranian Communist Party in 1963. It's members were mainly university students who received guerrilla training in PLO camps in Lebanon and Southern Yemen. We can add to that Saddam's Fedayeen.
Re: Link between Frank Herbert's "Dune" and Iraqi military tradition? Yes, Frank Herbert traveled forward in time to gather information about his book from today's conflict.
I actually wondered about that when I read about the Fedayeen in the papers today. Problem with that is that Saddam is a poor follow on to Leto and Paul Atreides.......then again, Bush seems to share certain characteristics with Baron Harkonnen.
Wouldn't it be more like the US is the invaders of the planet? Oh wait, forgot, those were the bad guys. Can't be us.
Re: Re: Link between Frank Herbert's "Dune" and Iraqi military tradition? No, no, no he drew all of this from a prophecy that he had. His interpretation was just off a little bit.
This is a pretty interesting read about the origin of the novels, by Frank Herbert himself: http://www.dunenovels.com/news/genesis.html At any rate, Paul Muad'Dib's Fedaykin are as nuts as Saddam's Fedayeen... -Adam
From above site: Personal observation has convinced me that in the power area of politics/economics and in their logical consequence, war, people tend to give over every decision-making capacity to any leader who can wrap himself in the myth fabric of the society. Hitler did it. Churchill did it. Franklin Roosevelt did it. Stalin did it. Mussolini did it. My favorite examples are John F. Kennedy and George Patton. Both fitted themselves into the flamboyant Camelot pattern, consciously assuming bigger-than-life appearance. But the most casual observation reveals that neither was bigger than life. Each had our common human ailment-clay feet. This, then, was one of my themes for Dune: Don't give over all of your critical faculties to people in power, no matter how admirable those people may appear to be. Beneath the hero's facade you will find a human being who makes human mistakes. Enormous problems arise when human mistakes are made on the grand scale available to a superhero. And sometimes you run into another problem. It is demonstrable that power structures tend to attract people who want power for the sake of power and that a significant proportion of such people are imbalanced-in a word, insane. Any analogies to the current administration, and their scyophantic Congress? Hell, its low-hangin' fruit...and Congress, sans Barbara Lee, ought to sent directly to jail for failing to defend the Constitution...
Even more fun, from same site: Yes, there are analogs in Dune of today's events-corruption and bribery in the highest places, whole police forces lost to organized crime, regulatory agencies taken over by the people they are supposed to regulate. The scarce water of Dune is an exact analog of oil scarcity. CHOAM is OPEC. The dirty black spice...must flow.
I recently listened to the novel again (during commute) and this time I was struck by all the Arabic sources for names/places, etc. As a moderate-to-good Arabic speaker myself, this was something I had of course entirely missed when reading it as a kid. I'm sure there's some pretty decent academic work out there on this connection, btw, but I haven't bothered to look for it. I know Herbert was heavily interested in the environment, particularly water retention, so I would bet he had made a few trips to the Mid East or North Africa and borrowed on that atmosphere for his novels. Lucas did the same for the early scenes of Star Wars, using the sights and sounds of Tunisia and Morocco as his inspiration.
I was struck how our embeds filming in a sandstorm looked a lot like Dino DeLaurentis' terrible film version of Dune ... at least the 10 minutes I saw.