Does anyone still remember
the war on terror? On Sunday night, Jan. 9, it will be lobbed back onto
the TV screen like a hand grenade with the new season of "24," Fox's
all-cliffhangers, all-the-time series about Jack Bauer, the relentless
American intelligence agent played by Kiefer Sutherland. You will find
no plot surprises divulged here. But tune in, and you'll return, not
necessarily nostalgically, to the do-or-die post-9/11 battle that has
been all but forgotten as we remain trapped in its nominally connected
sequel, the war against Saddam Hussein.
This show is having none of President Bush's notion that Iraq is "the
central front in the war on terror." In "24," the central front of that
war is the American home front, not Mosul. "We weren't thinking of the
war in Iraq when we came up with this story," said Joel Surnow, the
show's co-creator, when I spoke with him last week. On "24," they're
thinking about Islamic terrorism instead of Baathist insurgents, about
homeland security instead of the prospects for an election in the Sunni
triangle.
In the America of "24," as in the real one, government bureaucrats are
busier fighting each other than Al Qaeda. Trains are unprotected from
terrorists, and so is the Internet. The handsome Turkish family next
door in sun-dappled Southern California is a sleeper cell the F.B.I.
didn't find. The secretary of defense must not only contend with
terrorists but also with a glib antiwar son who, in his view, has
succumbed to "sixth-grade Michael Moore logic." Dad, amusingly enough,
is played by William Devane, the actor who first became famous 30 years
ago impersonating John F. Kennedy in a television drama ("The Missiles
of October") about a colder war where the battle lines were clearly
drawn.
In its own way, "24" is as provocative as a Moore manifesto. It shows
but does not moralize about the use of abuse and torture by Americans
interrogating terrorists; the results cut both ways in the four hours
of the season I've seen, and there's a hint, as vibrant as an orange
jumpsuit, that American criminality at Guantánamo may guarantee ugly
payback in the O.C. as well as in the Middle East.
"24" Is Such A Great Show, "Day
2" had the show dealing with middle-eastern sponsored terrorist
attempting a nuclear attack on the United States. Jack Bauer later
found out it was corporate interests (Haliburton?) manipulating the
United States into attacking the middle-east, in order to drive up oil
prices.
It shows but does not moralize about the use of abuse and torture by Americans interrogating terrorists;
The interrogation of terrorists is nothing. They had a Secret Service
agent torture a Presidential Advisor using water and electricity. Bauer
unceremoniously shot a guy who was a link to a terrorist with a nuke,
then said "I need a hacksaw" which he used, offscreen to cut off the
guy's head to deliver to another sinister guy.
There are other instances. You name it. They've done it.
