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Letter from AmericaRomanticising terrorismWhat do a US Army General and a left leaning New York magazine have in common? Answer: They both hate torture. In a fascinating story that spans issues related to the influence of popular media, the actual versus the perceived views of top military brass, the survivability of extreme conservatives even in Hollywood, The New Yorker ran a story this last month that described how the head of West Point (= Sandhurst) confronted the makers of 24 (the hit US drama) about their romanticisation of terror. Say what? Yes, you have it right — 24, notorious for its regular use of torture in its descriptions of Jack Bauer’s lonely fight against terrorism, was upbraided for being too macho by US Army Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, the dean of the United States Military Academy at West Point. It’s easy to imagine a cartoon Brigadier dressing down those flakey Californians in Hollywood for being too wet, wimpish, politically correct, or generally ‘un-American’, but for being too aggressive? Yet that is what took place. Real-time dramaIf you haven’t seen 24, it’s a show that uses the ‘trick’ of 24-hour long episodes with a ticking clock indicating that each hour represents an hour of ‘real time’ in the drama. The pace of the show has attracted millions of viewers, countless awards, since its inception in 2001, in the post-9/11 American angst. Basically the hero runs around trying to stop terrorists from blowing up LA, or New York, or some mega-city (you get the picture) and has 24 hours in which to do it. Frequently he is presented with a choice: either let several million human beings get fried, or torture this despicable (usually Arab-American) individual in front of you to get the crucial information. Inevitably, Bauer chooses the latter course. And victory is won, or death stayed for another few breathless seconds or hours. Effect on recruitsWhat the military were complaining about was the effect this was having on their recruits. They tried to tell them that torture didn’t work — as is the tested reality of intelligence services the world over — but after seeing a few 24 episodes, they were all just longing to barge in the detainees’ doors and shoot off a kneecap or two. Simple, right? Wrong. In fact, intelligence, the top interrogators informed the Hollywood crew of 24, is never gained in such ways reliably, but rather through occasional ‘ruses’ — such as giving someone a postcard to send home and thereby discovering the address and name of the recipient (though if the terrorist fell for that you’d think they’d need their head examining and not just the heart). Or, most commonly, through the slow process of building rapport with the information holder, until the information is finally (and genuinely/reliably) given. How to get information?But in Bauer-land (or in the minds of the writers of 24), actually the choice is more stark. What would you not do if you had to get information out of someone to save several million lives? Surely anything is right in such an instance? The reality that it doesn’t work did not, according to The New Yorker, really penetrate at all. Nor did the more appalling reality, still, that not only does it not work, but even the more mild (gosh, do we really have to categorise it that way?) techniques of, say, water boarding actually give the enemy moral permission to do the same to you. How are you going to conduct an effective foreign policy when you’re across the table from someone whose people have been beaten, or denied their rights, or treated inhumanely in some shape or fashion? The answer is you’re not. Falling into our own pitAs the book of Proverbs puts it: ‘If a man digs a pit, he will fall into it; if a man rolls a stone, it will roll back on him’ (Proverbs 26.27). In one instance related, military personnel in Iraq, after watching an episode of 24, rushed to try the same barbarous technique (pretending that someone was being tortured in a cell next door), and was only prevented by the watchfulness of their superiors. We do not live in a moral vacuum. If in days to come, America complains of its waning moral authority in the world, it will know where to look for the cause. When the ends justify the means, the end may not be far away. Josh Moody,
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