Our Nation Has a Missionthough the united states no longer uses Western films to discuss national issues, the films' relationship to American history, or their place in national mythologies, occasionally a Western is released that reminds us their power. Director James Mangold's 3:10 to Yuma (2007) is such a Western. It is, I want to argue, an Iraq War Western. And since it is a remake the 1957 3:10 to Yuma, it is able to place the in Iraq in the context two other American missions-the settling the West and the Cold War.In 2003 the United States undertook the liberation Iraq under the banner the most deeply held belief American patriotism, that are a people set apart, a people with a providential (McKenna 6). America needs missions in order to affirm its sense itself as exceptional, alone among the nations the world favored by God. In film, which so often displaces the political with the personal, the idea America's exceptional is often conveyed through stories exceptional Americans. It is the heroic individuals art who often carry the meaning national destiny. In the willingness these characters to act courageously, we see a model for national action. And we see in their virtue and triumphs the promise that a virtuous America will be successful.A number anti-Iraq War films focused specifically on the nature heroism in that conflict in order to deny that war the legitimacy that heroism can bestow. In the Valley Elah (2007) and Redacted (2007) dealt with soldiers who lost their humanity fighting in Iraq, and Hurt Locker (2009), more ambiguously, reduced heroism to an adrenaline addiction. As a character says in In the Valley Elah, you shouldn't send heroes to places like Iraq, [where] everything is fucked up.No genre is more famous for creating heroes and incorporating grand, national themes in the personal stories Americans than the Western. has said that Westerns are about great mythical landscape, Mt. Olympus, in which all the great American themes are played out in this kind fever dream (James Mangold A15). And although the Western returns again and again to the same myths, it does so, according to Mangold, to place the events the day in that mythic landscape. Westerns have a tradition, he noted in an interview, of being able to gracefully and easily fold into their subtext ideas about the moment (Esther 28).The continued influence the cowboy narrative was integral to the way George W. Bush presented himself, the war on terror, and his war in Iraq. It was immediately after 9/11 that he likened Osama Bin Laden to a Western whom he wanted dead or alive. More significant was his mission accomplished announcement. In a culture used to the updating the Western hero to fighter pilots in Star Wars (1977), Top Gun (1986), and Space Cowboys (2000), for example, the link between Bush stepping out the jet in full fighter uniform and the symbolism the Western hero could not be missed. His speech on the aircraft carrier that first day May in 2003 continued the Western theme his visual presence tried to establish. He called Iraq an outlaw regime, invoked the cavalry goal bringing order to parts the country that remain dangerous, used the language Manifest Destiny to announce to the world that our nation has a mission, and at the end tied America's to God (as well as to the Western captivity narrative)-To the captives, come out, he said, quoting from Isaiah 49:9.But just as Western films have long provided mythic examples courageous men who subdue vicious outlaws, as in the original 3:10 to Yuma, which could be used to support American policies such as the Cold War, they also have a history that dates at least to the Vietnam War debunking the myth the Western hero and the idea American exceptionalism that the hero carries. …