Shoot the Shaggy Dog in Real Life.
- WWII Naval pilot Joseph P. Kennedy, eldest brother of John F. Kennedy, volunteered for Operation Aphrodite, a dangerous series of 1944 missions to destroy hard-to-reach targets like the German V3 supercannon. He and his co-pilot were to arm the explosives in their bomber, which could not be done remotely, and bail out. The bomber would then be piloted by remote control, crashing into the V3's bunker complex and exploding. But shortly after the explosives were armed, they prematurely exploded, vaporizing plane and crew. The shaggy dog was thoroughly shot, however, when it was later discovered that the V3 complex had already been damaged beyond repair with a more conventional method by Lancaster bombers from the 617 Squadron on July 6, 1944.
- Roman Emperor Heraclius' entire life was this. He rose from relative obscurity to depose the tyrannical and insane Emperor Phocas, who had lost most of the Roman Empire to the Sassanid Iranians. Heraclius retook Anatolia, Syria, and Egypt through years of hard fighting, personally leading his armies and fighting Persian cataphracts hand to hand. Eventually, the Persians made peace and became a subordinate ally after Heraclius took their Capitol. Less than six years after peace was delayed, the newly converted-to-Islam Arabs invaded and conquered almost everything Heraclius had retaken. This didn't go unnoticed by historians; contemporary historians admit that if Heraclius had passed away after the war with the Sassanids, he could have been seen as the greatest Roman general since Scipio Africanus, but instead was seen as in charge of a disastrous loss of territory and prestige. Modern historians hold a far more kinder view, acknowledging that he did wind up losing most of his newly regained territories, but that he still rescued the Empire from the Sassanids, and primarily concede that he was in a terrible situation and did the best he could, with the disaster at Yarmouk primarily on the generals at the scene, and that he did try to salvage the situation in Syria before deciding to abandon it and hunker down in Anatolia.
- Aaron Burr's political career. He was taken in by the Democratic-Republican party specifically to be set up as a fall guy over the course of a decade or so, in a Failure Gambit which involved psychologically abusing and publically humiliating him, and eventually when he was nearly able to Take a Third Option and subvert the whole plan, Thomas Jefferson switched the plan to "Make Sure Everybody In America Hates Aaron Burr." And then after that, he switched it again to "Kill Aaron Burr At All Costs." Burr survived, but thoroughly traumatized, spent the rest of his life impoverished and despised by pretty much everybody, and to this day is almost universally depicted as having simply materialized into existence to shoot Alexander Hamilton before disappearing off the face of the earth. It's telling that his character in Hamilton is one of the more sympathetic depictions of him.
- The July 20th Plot was one of the many desperate attempts by sane Germans disgusted by Hitler and the Third Reich during World War II. As with earlier attempts, the plan was within inches of killing Der Fuhrer and failed only due to the combination of a cavalcade of improbably unfortunate twists of fate. Conceived and coordinated by Henning von Tresckow
, planned and carried out in large part by the charismatic one-eyed and one-handed Major Claus Philipp Maria Justinian Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, Brigadier-General Hans Oster, General Friedrich Olbricht, and young Oberleutnant Werner Karl von Haeften, all of whom (along with many, many, many others who were crucial to the plot) paid for their attempt with their lives—and many of them paid with the lives of their families and friends. Valkyrie tells much of the story.- What makes it even more Shoot the Shaggy Dog is the fact that the July 20 Plot only made things worse as Ian Kershaw argued. Hitler used the assassination attempt to strengthen party loyalty and he became virtually unopposed in the final year of the war, with no one standing up to Hitler until the very end and seeking to continue the war on the Eastern Front, which in many ways was the goal of the July 20 plotters as well. In other words, it's perhaps unlikely that the plot would have truly changed things for Germany even if things had been different.
- From the perspective of Communism, its sympathizers and its partisans, as well as its enemies, the Cold War, was this. There is an entire trope about this.
- After Red October and its hopes, came decades of war, invasions, and conquest coupled with political repression, famine, and bad housing, and at the end of it all, there was a new Russia with oligarchs in power, wide income inequality, a radiation disaster over Chernobyl and mixed emotions and regret. At the end of it all, the same inter-regional nationalisms and disputes of the 19th Century have flared up in the former Warsaw Pact leading to conflicts in Chechnya and Ukraine.
- The Soviet war in Afghanistan in the '80s. Thousands of Soviet casualties in the name of communism in Afghanistan... just for the whole communist and Soviet system to come crashing down a few years later.
- From the perspective of the Afghan rebels, it was an example of this as well. Millions of Afghans died before the Soviets and their totalitarian puppet regime was defeated. However, peace didn’t return to the country because the various rebel groups couldn’t agree on how to rule. This resulted in a years-long civil war. That war itself was also a shaggy dog story, as it was none of the rebel groups won, but rather a third party; the Pakistani-backed Taliban. Formed largely by radicalized refugees who had fled from the Soviets, the Taliban defeated the rebels and set up a new totalitarian regime that lasted until 2001.
- From the American perspective, the Vietnam War turned out to be this, when the Communist Northern side quickly steamrolled over the Southern side that the US sided with, making the entire conflict and casualties on the American side ultimately meaningless. The American veterans who fought in Vietnam were treated poorly, with the press reporting on the massacres of My Lai and other actions, and most of the American public feeling that it was not a "good war".
- There's the Second (Third if you count its war with France) Vietnam War of 1979 between Vietnam, Cambodia, and China 4 years later, especially meaningless for China and the CIA. After a war between the Khmer Rouge and Vietnam broke out, China invaded its former ally, flattened the industry and trust it had built in North Vietnam before during the last war, only for the Khmer Rouge to fall. Oh, and small-scale fighting continued until 1990.
- The Cambodian theatre of the Indochina Wars are another example. The Cambodian monarch, Prince Sihanouk, tried to protect his sovereignty by aiding the North Vietnamese in the Vietnam War, but this outraged Washington. When the North Vietnamese abused Cambodia’s hospitality and undermined it, many Cambodians also became enraged, and this led to a coup that toppled Sihanouk and set up a US-backed military “republic”. Sihanouk was still popular with the rural peasantry, however, and his subsequent endorsement of the communist Khmer Rouge movement swelled its ranks. With substantial North Vietnamese backing, the Khmer Rouge overthrew the republic after the US pulled out of Vietnam.
- This was followed by the Third Indochina War. After coming to power, Khmer Rouge began a horrific, genocidal campaign to reshape Cambodia into their idea of an agrarian utopia. They aligned with China and started border raids against their former Vietnamese allies. The latter led to another Vietnamese invasion, which inadvertently stopped the genocide but installed a new authoritarian communist regime, which was essentially a Vietnamese puppet government. Cue another insurgency that lasted until 1990. After all of it, Cambodia was left poor and devastated, and once again slipped back into authoritarian rule in the 21st century under Hun Sen’s regime.
- Of course, in the long run, America "won" the Cold War as the USSR ended up being dismembered, Vietnam became an American ally and alongside China, it has moderated its communist vision. However, without a real enemy and with no changes to their vast military spending, and the poor diplomacy in the Middle East, the new conflict of The War on Terror arrived in less than ten years since the end of the Soviet Union.
- For the Arab World as a whole, the entire 20th Century is this. After the end of the Ottoman Empire, they were partitioned by the French and the English into many territories. They barely had breathing room at the dawn of decolonization when the Cold War led to the formation of client states for the Soviet Union and the United States. Arab nationalism, once a constructive homegrown movement became defunct, rotten, and ineffectual, leading to the dawn of religious militancy. Then came The War on Terror and the Arab Spring and a 21st Century which as it reaches the anniversary of the end of World War I seems like a huge return to square one, with several people attributing problems in the region to the Sykes-Picot agreement.
- This inevitably happens in artistic movements and trends. Eventually, something that was edgy, original, and avant-garde becomes mainstream and another trend with only The Theme Park Version surviving and all the Unbuilt Trope forgotten by all but a few. In addition, the mainstream audience never quite opens itself up to outsider art, and the next generation of artists will still have to fight the same battles over and over again to get their voice heard, with only a few worthy artists, getting success.
- Surrealism in the early 20th century was a movement in literature, music, and painting that was shocking and transgressive. It attacked conventional morality, Hypocrisy and wanted people to have fun and stop being so stuffed in. Yet, it eventually became an art movement that was preserved in museums and all its stylistic quirks got absorbed into the mainstream:Luis Buñuel: "I sometimes say that surrealism triumphed in the inessential and failed in the essential. . . . The surrealist movement cared little about gloriously entering the histories of literature and painting. What it wished above all, an imperious and unrealizable wish was to transform the world and change life. On this point — the essential — a quick look around us clearly shows our failure."
- The New Hollywood movement was a brief interval where it seemed like one could work in the mainstream and make experimental, adult stories that won an audience, with directors having Auteur License. This decade came after the end of the Old Hollywood and its Epic Movie and by the end of the decade, the failure of some risky ventures and the success of Star Wars and its merchandising led to a new establishment by the 1980s, where ambitious subject matters became exceptions for mainstream film-makers, and where directors still had to struggle for Auteur License, and the next generation of film-makers (Quentin Tarantino, The Coen Brothers, Kevin Smith, Paul Thomas Anderson, et al.) started in the independent scene.
- This happens with many other music forms. Initially, it's The New Rock & Roll like Opera was, like Richard Wagner was, like Jazz music was, then the true Rock and Roll comes and classical music and Jazz ends up becoming a niche and academic pursuit where formerly it had been a popular art form.
- Surrealism in the early 20th century was a movement in literature, music, and painting that was shocking and transgressive. It attacked conventional morality, Hypocrisy and wanted people to have fun and stop being so stuffed in. Yet, it eventually became an art movement that was preserved in museums and all its stylistic quirks got absorbed into the mainstream:
- Charlotte Corday sacrificed her life to assassinate Jean-Paul Marat, allowing herself to be captured and publicly executed after stabbing him. She believed his death would prevent further escalation of violence in the French revolution: "I have killed one man to save a hundred thousand." However, Marat became a martyr to the Montagnards faction of the Jacobins, who gained influence as a result, as well as the sans-culottes; the Reign of Terror continued under Robespierre. Ultimately her actions and death were meaningless.
- Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov in the Soyuz 1 space mission, during The Space Race. Komarov knew the mission was unsafe, but knowing that his friend Yuri Gagarin was his backup, went ahead with the mission anyway so that his friend wouldn't have to take the risk instead. Everything went wrong. The capsule's solar cells didn't deploy properly. Communications broke down. The maneuvering thrusters that were designed to re-orient the ship lacked pressure. He couldn't see the sun to navigate the ship. After all that, after a heroic effort rigging up a system with the gyroscopes so that at last he could re-enter the atmosphere, the parachutes failed, and he died. Within a year, his friend would die in a plane crash anyway.
- During the 1970s, an entire generation of athletes in sixty-five countries, including the United States, dedicated years of their lives training to compete in the 1980 Summer Olympics, which were held in Moscow. However, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan prior to the Olympics, receiving worldwide condemnation. The United States subsequently led a boycott of the Olympics to protest the invasion. Sixty-four other nations joined. As a result, the dreams of thousands of athletes hoping for Olympic glory were dashed due to political reasons outside of their control. While several affected athletes succeeded playing in the 1984 and 1988 Olympics, many more would never be able to return to the Olympic form necessary to compete later. When the Olympics were held in Los Angeles in 1984, The Soviet Union led a counter-boycott of those games, affecting athletes in eighteen countries. And the invasion? It continued for several years after the Olympic boycotts, with the Soviets only withdrawing their troops in failure after being stopped by mujahideen fighters armed by the US.
- The 2002 Mecca girls' school fire is a tragic example. The school caught fire and the students were evacuated, but they were ordered back into the burning school by the Saudi mutaween police for not wearing their headscarves in public. Fifteen of the students were killed in the fire.
- In North Carolina, a pregnant mother on her way to give birth was killed in a car crash, but the baby survived and was delivered successfully. This amazing story got attention in the news, but the baby died a few days later.
- Similarly, a girl was born without a trachea in South Korea, and otherwise wouldn't have survived had the doctors not found a small hole near her windpipe. An artificial trachea was to be given to her in 2013, the first surgery of its kind on a child. The effort was successful, but the girl died a few months later.
- In 2004, a doctor's last-ditch innovation saved the life of a teenage girl infected with rabies, leading many to believe that what he did could be a breakthrough in the treatment of the disease in humansnote . However, over two dozen subsequent uses of the treatment, known as the "Milwaukee Protocol", have failed, leading researchers to conclude that there was probably something unique about the original case that also contributed to the patient's survival, meaning that the treatment will be fruitless in the overwhelming majority of cases.
- The would-be second Iranian 'revolution' died with a whimper. After the dubious reelection of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009, protests broke out across the country on a scale not seen since 1979, inspiring hope both within and without Iran that real change was possible. Alas, the protestor's aspirations were nipped in the bud, with deadly force.
- A West Virginian police officer was fired for not killing a man with an unloaded gun after deducing that the man wasn't a threat to anyone and was, in fact, attempting a Suicide by Cop. The police officer successfully de-escalated the situation and was fired with no pension for his efforts. And the man was fatally shot by two other police officers who arrived on the scene later.
- The entire story of Otto Warmbier, a college student who was held as a political prisoner by North Korea. In June 2017, he was finally released and returned home. Sadly, he died only days after he came back, having spent the majority of his imprisonment in a coma as a result of brain damage with his family having him Taken Off Life Support upon his return.
- The "Arab Spring" protests and uprisings in 2010-11, so called because of widespread optimism that they would lead to lasting improvements in a number of Middle Eastern countries with oppressive authoritarian governments. Only Tunisia's revolution has seen any positive change. Every other affected country is either right back where it started, or far worse. Syria is especially noteworthy, as its massive civil war- still ongoing- managed to catapult the Islamic State from terrorist group to terrorist state that is so dreaded the mere mention of its name is still inspiring fear years after it was largely neutralized in 2017. Some commentators (including Wikipedia) actually refer to the Arab Spring's aftermath as the Arab Winter.
- Operation Cottage. In 1943, thousands of American and Canadian forces invaded the island of Kiska to fight the Japanese who had taken it over the previous year. They lost 122 troops due to friendly fire and the difficult landscape of the island before realizing the Japanese weren't there anymore.
- The final Antarctic expedition of Robert Falcon Scott ended in the death of the entire party due to a communication mistake. Making it worse? Even with all their difficulties, they actually reached the South Pole... only to find a Norwegian flag. Roald Amundsen had beaten them by a month.
- The Battle of Tarakan, part of the first stage of the Borneo campaign of 1945, saw Allied forces land on Tarakan Island with the main objective of capturing the island's airfield and oil fields. After a hard-fought victory which saw the highest Allied casualties of any of the Borneo landings, over 100 civilians casualties, and the near-total devastation of the island, it turned out that the airfield was irreparably destroyed and the oil fields were so badly damaged they could not resume production until after the war.
