Degrees of Terror

Is it just me, or are we being sold an increasingly militarized presidency in recent movies?

I first noticed the trend with last year's Independence Day, in which the president of the United States saves the world from alien invaders by flying his own nuclear-armed fighter jet in a coordinated air attack on huge, nasty flying saucers. He is a veteran of the Persian Gulf war, which is enough to give him hero status in the movie.

While the script never raises any disturbing questions about that war, the president repeatedly frets about the decision to use nuclear weapons, showing that he is the quintessential Reluctant Warrior. His concern wins our sympathy—and prepares us to accept whatever action he takes as necessary.

This year the heroic American president is none other than Harrison Ford in Air Force One. Again, the president's heroism is measured by his combat experience; again, his (temporary) anguish over the use of force when confronted by a terrorist threatening his family and staff earns our sympathy.

This time, however, global political realities are allowed brief cameo appearances. The president solemnly declares a new policy of intractable opposition to terrorism—new, we are to suppose, in that he actually means it. (True to genre and to real life, no one even cracks a smile, let alone raises questions about U.S. support for terrorists in Central America, Angola, or Israeli-occupied Lebanon.)

The character who at last points out that the United States killed 100,000 Iraqi civilians in the Gulf war is the terrorist villain. His dastardly question is so out of bounds morally that no one in the movie, least of all the president, bothers to reply.

The script of Air Force One raises the question neatly, if only by implication: How is the relatively petty terrorism of several gun-wielding guerrillas who hijack the president's plane morally different from the strategic bombing of thousands of civilians? The answer the movie provides is, simply, that Americans are better people, while the Russian separatists willing to kill for their nationalist cause are cowardly psychopaths.

It's hard to miss the point. Again and again the president is congratulated for staying with "his people"—never mind the global consequences of his risky heroics. The last surviving terrorist is marked as a craven coward, more concerned to save his own neck than to complete his mission.

MILITARY ESPRIT DE CORPS is offered here as an ethical position. In Air Force One, the overriding moral principle is never to abandon your comrade—no matter how many civilians you place in harm's way.

Perhaps it's not surprising that a military code of honor is Hollywood's best guess for a political morality. After all, the two top-ranking officers from the Persian Gulf war have become national heroes, one even seriously considered for the presidency. (It appears not to matter that Norman Schwarzkopf's résumé with the CIA includes a stint setting up the Shah of Iran's murderous secret police, the Savak; or that as a Pentagon bureaucrat Colin Powell had trouble perceiving any actionable moral lapses in the My Lai massacre.)

One thing seems certain: The boot-camp morality offered up in these movies will be the best we can expect until we can sustain serious conversations in our communities about what happened in the Persian Gulf war, and why much of it was wrong.

NEIL ELLIOTT is associate professor of theology at the College of St. Catherine's in St. Paul, and is a fledgling stand-up comic.

Air Force One. Directed by Wolfgang Petersen. Released by Columbia Pictures, 1997.