First of all, you have to look at the death of Dan, Cobra Commander's elder brother. For those of you who don't know the story, Dan was in Vietnam and signed on for new tours all the time to make sure his brother wouldn't have to go to war like him. Cobra Commander, who I'll call CC from now on, was supposed to have idolized his brother. When Dan came back he was seeking death, recklessly drunk-driving, dying in a car crash with Snake-Eyes' parents and sister. Now the official Joe propaganda would have you believe that the guilt over the death of his brother made CC flip, that he twisted things round in his head and sent Zartan to kill Snake-Eyes cause he couldn't accept his responsibility for the death of his brother, that it was partially his fault.
May I ask where the logic in that lies? Firstly, Dan was his own person, he made his own decisions. Whether it was about staying on in Vietnam or wanting to die after that, it was his decision, not his brother's. CC had no influence whatsoever over his death, he MAY even have tried to offer Dan some help in sorting out his alcohol problem, we don't know. It's possible, if CC was as fond of his brother as they say.
Secondly, twisting the car crash to be Snake-Eyes' (S-E) fault... If S-E hadn't come back from Vietnam when he did, his family wouldn't have been headed to the airport and Dan wouldn't have crashed with them. He might've crashed with someone else, but S-E is the reason THAT car was on the road and in Dan's way on that day. Karmic paths, fates locked on parallel paths perhaps? CC and S-E were tied from the hip from then on?
On a certain level it was S-E's fault Dan died. If you want someone to blame, you go for the cause and the survivor. Had the assassination attempt on S-E succeeded, the world might've been very different indeed. It's possible CC would have realized revenge doesn't bring back the dead, or not; it's possible Cobra wouldn't exist the way it now does because S-E died. Things to think about, all you S-E worshippers. Would you sacrifice your hero to POSSIBLY prevent Cobra from becoming what it is today?
CC's sales plans got called a pyramid scheme. Well,
if you're dumb enough to buy it, you deserve possibly
getting ripped off. If you're smart enough to come
up with one, use it, that's all I can say. It is
always only the little people who have to face the law,
big companies can get away with most things. If not
forever, then at least for very long times, by which
time the bosses will have had enough time to collect
the money and scram, anyway.
Sometimes there's a very thin line between legal
and illegal in the corporate world today. You have
enough money and enough good lawyers, you CAN get
away with murder. You're a country, you can get away
with genocide, provided you've played your cards
right (ie. have oil so you're worth protecting,
support the right countries, know the right ppl,
etc.). It's all about size. CC was right, and as his
own son Billy later put it "Paranoia is knowing
the truth."
We only have the word of CC's wife on that he flipped
after Dan's death, and she spoke about that after
he'd left and taken Billy with him. She might've carried
a grudge, or at the very least saw things only from her
point of view. What we don't know is what SHE was like
at the time. Was she a good mother? Did CC take Billy
with him because he felt it was better than leaving him
with her?
She had threatened to leave him already and we don't
know if she was supportive of her husband in his time
of crisis, when his business was going downhill and his
brother had just died, too. From HER latter actions we
could make the conclusion that SHE clearly felt guilty
for all those years, obsessed with Billy, because she
said she had his room preserved the way it was when
he was a kid. This to me does NOT suggest a stable
individual, nor does walking into a military base
with a gun in her handbag, to try and get information
out of an innocent receptionist by threats. And we're
taking HER words about him as the truth? Yeah, right!
Next up is Billy.