By: Ian Millican
The popular television series “24″ examines the disconnect between law
and justice, albeit in a very skewed, arguably neoconservative manner.
Keefer Sutherland plays Jack Bauer, the show’s Christ-like superhero,
who in each season sacrifices himself to save the United States from an
imminent terrorist attack. Each episode of a season represents one
“real time” hour of a day. There are twenty-four episodes in each
season.
Throughout the series, Bauer’s wife is murdered, he becomes addicted to
heroine while infiltrating a Mexican drug cartel, he fakes his own death
and forsakes everything and everyone he knows and holds close, and he is
detained and tortured by the Chinese government, to name a few
sacrifices he’s made in the line of duty. I think he even dies for a
few minutes in one episode. For six seasons, Bauer has successfully
saved the United States from catastrophe.
Nevertheless, the seventh season, which began this week, starts with
Bauer being held criminally liable by a senate committee for laws he has
broken protecting the U.S. During a grilling by a pompous senator, the
FBI interrupts and asks Bauer to help diffuse another threat, which
inevitably requires the same methods under scrutiny at the hearing.
To be sure, he breaks many laws. Much of the action in 24 can be boiled
down to Bauer’s finding and torturing terrorists or suspected
terrorists. Bauer is very good at torture and no matter how bad a dude
is, Bauer always breaks him and saves the day.
The point, at least what I apprehend as the point 24’s writers attempt
to make, is this: Bauer does break laws and protocol, and sure,
sometimes tortures a few people here and there, but to keep the U.S.
safe from terrorist attacks, his actions are necessary. Furthermore, it
is an injustice for this savior of the U.S., despite having broken our
laws, to be indicted by the same bureaucrats and politicians who don’t
have the brass to save the day themselves and in many circumstances
place impediments before Bauer in accomplishing that task.
A lot of this question is probably intellectually disingenuous in the
first place. Regarding the issue of torture, 24 focuses only on the
well-known ticking time bomb hypothetical. Additionally, many scholars
and practitioners alike argue that torture is not a reliable method for
retrieving valuable or sensitive information. Thus, Bauer’s infallible
methods that always get the right answer are too unrealistic to actually
examine the issue of torture in a ticking time bomb situation. 24 runs
on the famously neoconservative Fox network, which seems to account for
this.
