24: An Addiction & Ruminations on Torture

24: An Addiction & Ruminations on Torture

There aren't terribly many TV shows that I watch, and generally, they aren't shows on broadcast TV. I'm a big fan of Mythbusters. History Channel and Discovery Channel both have some quite well done shows--and occasionally, some real disappointments.

My impression of History Channel has gone up a bit over the last five years. I used to often find myself watching documentaries on History Channel and finding lots of either minor errors or at least highly arguable interpretations. And not just in my area of specialization. I don't know if I am getting less demanding (not likely), or if they are getting better at what they choose to air. It is still generally fluff, but more accurate fluff than I recall back in 2001.

One of the cable channels was running re-runs of 24 a couple of years back, and I ended up watching parts of seasons three and four--and it was addictive. My wife bought seasons one and two for my birthday, and now we are watching season four.

If you haven't watched the show, there are several aspects that are unique. The format is that every episode covers one hour of a 24 hour day in the life of the Los Angeles office of the fictional Counter Terrorism Unit, as they respond to some crisis. They make some use of multiple screen images so you see stuff that is happening to different characters in disparate locations. The editing (at least of the three seasons that I have seen so far) is absolutely brilliant, and the use of musical score to set mood is outstanding.

There are some aspects of the show that are profoundly depressing and gritty. I would like to think that there is more torture by government agents in 24 than there is in real life, but with what we know of waterboarding at places like Gitmo--maybe it isn't as far off as I would like to think.

What I find powerful about 24's depiction of torture is that I suspect that it at least partly reflects what goes on in the real world--where people on our side do some pretty ugly things to get necessary information about terrorist plans. These are actions that most Americans would not want to know about, because it is horrible--but that are probably sometimes necessary to prevent great losses of life. And by torture, I don't mean playing Christina Aguilar music to prisoners at Gitmo.

While 24 definitely has a good guys/bad guys dichotomy, it also has unpleasant reminders of the dangers of the use of torture. Once you cross the line into accepting the use of abusive techniques for getting information from bad guys, it is possible to make mistakes--sometimes very serious mistakes--about who is a bad guy. Season four has a couple of episodes that confront some of the consequences of getting too relaxed.

This is a show that is pretty tough to watch in places. There are a number of torture sequences that are not terribly graphic, but any reasonably intelligent adult can put two and two together and realize what is implied--and it can be pretty unpleasant to think about.

I would like to think that in the real world, the use of torture against suspected terrorists is rare, limited to suspects who are unquestionably terrorists, and limited to the minimum necessary level of suffering required to accomplish that end. I would also not be surprised if much of the use of torture is in the style of medieval torturers, who often were able to elicit information by merely showing the instruments of torture.

To the extent that well-meaning sorts like John McCain want to make it clear that certain interrogation techniques will never be used by the United States, it creates a situation where this threat will not work. Indeed, putting terrorists on notice that we will not use torture may oddly enough create situations where we may have to actually use torture as part of interrogation. If a terrorist believes that the CIA is utterly precluded from using torture, the threat won't be persuasive; only the actual infliction of suffering will accomplish those ends.

One aspect to 24 that I find frustrating is that much of the technology you see is almost real. Yes, there are an enormous number of traffic cameras and surveillance cameras out there. The full extent of how much America was already under surveillance came out in Timothy McVeigh's trial, when it turned out that there was a surprising amount of video coverage of many events involved in the case.

On the other hand, the vast majority of the surveillance cameras out there simply don't have the resolution to do what we see done. You can't take your average 640x480 video camera output, zoom in 20x on the license plate on a moving car, and really expect to have a crisp, easy to read plate. There are some astonishingly crisp satellite images that are taken by the KH-12 and similar spy satellites, but they are in low orbits that are moving more than four miles per second. They can't take dozens of images of the same location a second or two apart.

Much of the computer and network jargon is also utterly bogus--just close enough to the real thing that it sounds like it might be real, except if you know much about how computer and telecommunications networks actually work. Then it is just laughable! While I'm not current on telephone tracing technology, I'm pretty sure that most of the problems that our intrepid heroes in 24 have with tracing terrorist phone calls is grossly inaccurate. The transition from analog to digital telephone systems has dramatically changed this situation. I worked for a company many years ago that was requested as part of surveillance efforts to add certain capabilities to our switching equipment for law enforcement purposes, and I'm sure by now, trace time is measured not in minutes, but in fractions of a second.

On the human side, 24 has some very strong points, and some very weak points. It shows human behavior at its worst (petty, jealous, pigheaded, greedy) and at its best--such as the willingness of CTU employees to sacrifice themselves for the greater good. Make no mistake about it--America has no shortage of men and women who put themselves in harm's way for our safety, in military service, in law enforcement, and in real world organizations not so different from 24's CTU. Sometimes they are everything we think of as honorable and wonderful; sometimes they are people doing dirty jobs that we don't want to examine too closely. As George Orwell observed, "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."

On the downside, there are aspects to 24 that I find silly or unrealistic. Our hero Jack Bauer is too fearless, too resourceful, too strong, too capable. He is not without his faults, but in the real world, no one is that good. In the real world, teams of real people accomplish things that 24's Jack Bauer does all by himself. In the first two seasons, so much of the plot was wrapped around the ability of Bauer's daughter to get herself repeatedly into hazardous situations that I found myself thinking of Snidely Whiplash and Nell tied up on the railroad tracks.

One plot device that 24 overuses involves good people who do wrong things because the bad guys have taken family members hostage. In the real world, especially in the Middle East, this happens a lot. Perhaps if George Soros, the ACLU, and friends get their way, this will become common in America as well. But it isn't realistic now. Most people who work in sensitive occupations, such as law enforcement, work pretty hard to keep their families secure and information about them hard to get.

The other aspect of this that shows 24 is letting dramatic license take over is that almost anyone in counterterrorism work has to know that there will be no fair deals made. If someone takes your family hostage, the chances that they will be allowed to go free--with information that might lead to a later capture and conviction of the hostage takers--is about zero.

There is one other aspect of the show that bothers me a lot. The second season--which was filmed after 9/11 but before the invasion of Iraq--had a premise involving European and American businessmen helping terrorists to set off a nuclear weapon in the U.S. to provoke a war in the Middle East--in order to drive up oil prices. It is so Michael Moore. There are other subplots in season three that also have evil businessmen involved as well. While there are Americans who have become involved with terrorist activities, here and abroad, they have, to my knowledge, always been driven by their religion, and never by greed. This bothers me, because it tends to blur what is the core of the terrorist threat that the U.S. faces.

On the plus side, 24 doesn't pretend that our enemies are Russians, or Norwegians, or Jews. (Although season one, filmed before 9/11, involves Serbians, and season three is largely built around Mexican drug lords.) While not heavy handed, seasons two and four are clearly Middle Eastern Muslim fanatics, some of whom are sleeper cells.