The Siege, V and America's increasingly situational morality

THE SIEGE is more than just a really good movie featuring one of Denzel Washington’s best performances, it’s a time capsule… a fascinating, and rare, look at how Americans viewed international terrorism in the years (3 years to be exact) before 9/11.

The movie asks the question “how would America react if one of our largest cities faced a series of escalating terror attacks from a network of autonomous cells embedded within the population?” With regard to the specific reactions of US Government and law enforcement, the movie got some things right, and it got an awful lot wrong. But what’s always stuck with me in the years since the movie was released, is what it had to say about the motives of the terrorists who want us dead.

The most salient question of the post-9/11 era has been “why do they hate us?” To the extent that the filmmakers who made THE SIEGE tried to answer this question, this is what they came up with…

“You left me there… in Iraq… like a piece of shit”… he tells her, before confessing that he knows he cannot destroy America himself… but if he can fill Americans with enough fear and doubt, they will destroy themselves, by voluntarily exchanging their Liberty for political expediency.

Now, of course, movie plots are not the same thing as Government policy, but you can easily imagine audiences at the time nodding as Samir explained to Elise aka Sharon why he and his fellows were so intent on murdering as many Americans as possible. And indeed, just a few years later, as the post-9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began to spiral on towards quagmire, we heard a lot of the same reasoning from Leftist anti-War groups like Code Pink. We were engaging in an endless cycle of violence, they told us, that would leave only shattered lives and bitter orphaned young men bent on revenge… that some day the wages of those sins would come back to us in the form of bigger and more devastating terrorist attacks… that those attacks would lead to the militarization of our society… that the birth of the Department of Homeland Security was the first step in the creation of a vast a surveilance state that would eventually destroy the American way of life in ways the terrorists themselves could only dream about.

And on that last point, at least, we must give the Pinkos their due for having gotten at least one thing right. 23 years later, some of that dystopian future has come to pass as Military and Intelligence officers, fresh from their failures in the Middle Eastern theater, make seamless professional transitions to cable news outlets like CNN where they argue for increased surveillance and suppression of political dissent here at home on a nightly basis, while useful idiots like Rachel Maddow and Brian Stelter nod along… love in their eyes.

But as far as the roots of terror go, there was no one in the White House situation room willing to make Samir’s argument last summer as Joe Biden, based on little more than the political value of a 9/11 deadline, bungled the American withdrawal from Afghanistan so catastrophically that we were forced to abandon thousands of Afghans who have aided the American war effort over the years to eventual torture and death.

Will some of their descendants who manage to survive the coming purge blame the United States for what is about to happen to their familes? Will some of them join terror cells in hopes of visiting the violent results of that same callous disregard on American cities? Strangely, no one is asking those questions this time around.

America in 2022 suffers from many crises, but surely none is more dire than our fundamental lack of moral conviction… indeed the morality of the average American is highly situational and most often influenced by short-term political outcomes. “Right-and-Wrong” has been exchanged for “Right-and-Left.”

Whereas twenty years ago, we seemed to believe that failing to deliver on American committments to allies abroad could result in terrorism on our shores, in 2022 no one seems to care anymore. A cynic might say that the only difference is the letter in front of the President’s name… “D” this time, instead of “R.”

The same problem of situational ethics is true of our “Elite” Institutions as well… consider, for a moment, the way our Elite Institutions responded to the crisis in Sudan, with award show speeches from the likes of Richard Gere and Ben Affleck and celebrity sponsored “marches on Washington”, versus the way they are currentrly reacting to China’s oppression of the Uyghurs, which has mostly produced an embarrassed silence. It seems to me that the Sudanese Government’s biggest mistake was not having trillions of dollars to spread around to America’s Movie Stars, Corporations and Franchise Athletes in order to buy their silence, or if not silence, then at least the depraved indifference of people like Golden State Warriors minority owner Chalmath Palihapitiya.

It seems to me self-evident that a country without a common and consistent set of convictions, like honoring our commitments to protect those who fight alongside us, cannot long endure… which sometimes feels like the point.

The same political hypocrisy marinates another Hollywood offering… V FOR VENDETTA. This is a deeply stupid movie, but back in 2005 it did provoke a very interesting political reaction that is fun to compare to what some of the same people are saying about the World we live in, here in 2022.

Back in the days when George W. Bush was totally going to unleash a repressive theocratic regime on the formerly free States of America you guys!, the American Left was positively giddy at the thought of a “Government afraid of its people.” Guy Fawkes masks began to show up at American Anti-War protests, where earnest Progressives solemnly intoned “Remember remember the Fifth of November…” like dissidents in Cold War Prague.

But 17 years later, our Elites are aghast at the thought of a Government that fears its own people. How else to explain the demands by the credentialed class that we unleash the Marines on the peaceful Trucker Convoy currently shutting down Ottawa… that we drain the fuel from their tanks and “slash their tires” if they won’t peacably disperse. If a Guy Fawkes mask showed up on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Justin Trudeau would trip over himself running to the microphones to announce that this was a sure sign that what has been an entirely peaceful demonstration thus far, was about to become a violent insurrection… and again Maddow, Stelter and the rest of the motley crew at America’s failing Cable News Networks would nod along lovingly.

Which side, it’s fair to ask, would these people have been on in the battle between V and the repressive Government against which he fought?

As our Elected Officials are beginning to lose their grip on the people they would prefer to rule than govern, as they lash out with anger and violence towards anyone who questions their increasingly hypocritical edicts, as they visibly flaunt the same rules they would oppose on those without title or treasure… the answer is becoming distressingly clear.