Is It Worth Sacrificing the Lives of 8 Soldiers to Save Private Ryan

Saving Private Ryan is one of the earliest American films I watched as a Chinese. When I first watched this movie as a teenager, I had a question mark on my mind:

Is It Worth Sacrificing the Lives of 8 Soldiers to Save Private Ryan?

And I even had a debate with my classmate. But I think I was a stupid boy with some unsaturated opinion back at that time.

Recently, I watched this movie again. Now as a more saturated man, I want to discuss it again.

It’s a Military Mission, not a Trolley problem

When someone compares Ryan’s life to the lives of the 8 rescuers, they are actually falling into a cognitive bias.

It has never been a multiple-choice question, and the film never delves into the trolley problem.

When the command decided to dispatch a squad to find Ryan, they were considering the matter from a humanitarian perspective. They didn’t want Ryan’s mother to lose all four of her sons at once.

At that time, the command wasn’t intending to sacrifice the 8 rescuers. The rescue team probably didn’t think they would die either.

Compared to the Normandy landing, the risk of such a rescue mission wasn’t that high.

On the battlefield, any military operation carries risks. Whether you are attacking, defending, or assisting, you might die. Even if you do nothing and just stand by, you could still be killed by enemy bombardment.

‘Saving Private Ryan’ is just one of the countless tasks that soldiers face, and the inherent danger of this mission itself isn’t that high (compared to the Normandy landing). Therefore, we cannot blame Ryan for the deaths of those eight men.

Suppose an Uber driver is on his way to pick up a passenger, but the driver unfortunately dies in a traffic accident en route. Can you say the passenger killed the driver? It’s just a traffic accident and has nothing to do with the passenger. Countless traffic accidents happen every hour on Earth.

They died for fights, not for Ryan

In the movie, we can see that the deaths of the rescue squad were primarily due to additional combat missions, not from shielding Ryan from bullets.

When they encountered a hidden German outpost, the captain chose to take it down instead of bypassing it, to prevent subsequent friendly forces from being ambushed. As a result, the medic was killed in action.

After finding Ryan, the squad decided to stay and hold the position with him instead of retreating, ultimately suffering heavy casualties.

When faced with danger, they chose to fight rather than avoid it. That’s war, the brutal reality of war.

As long as the war continues, every soldier faces the danger of death.

They died for the war, not for Ryan.

The commanding officer who issued the order never intended to exchange Ryan’s life for the lives of the eight men.

If they didn’t carry out this mission, no one could guarantee that they wouldn’t be sacrificed on the next battlefield.

Saving Private Ryan is one of the best American war movies on my list. What’s your opinion?

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