Police Action ... or War?

Sometimes you find illustrations of truth in unintended places. Today, it dawned on me that Hollywood has inadvertently pointed to a truth about Americans that I'm sure they never intended.

In the movie, The Jerk, Steve Martin plays a likeable but painfully naive Navin Johnson who sets out from home to make his own way in the world. The humor in the movie revolves around his naivete. In one portion in the movie, Martin gets a job as a gas station attendant. Entirely at random, a madman decides he wants to kill someone, so he picks Martin out of a phonebook and sets out to kill him with a sniper rifle. The shooter isn't very good, and the first several rounds go through some cans of oil on display at the gas pumps. Martin runs inside the building to hide, assuming they're random shots, but the shooter's aim follows him into the building, striking oil cans inside the gas station window. Martin is unable to fathom that he would be the target, so he concludes, “It's the cans! Someone hates the oil cans!” And we all laugh because we know he is the target, not the cans.

Another movie has a similar scenario in it. In Fatal Instinct, a spoof of a whole gamut of movies (The title of the movie comes from two of the movies that are spoofed: Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct.), the main character played by Amand Assante is a cop by day and a lawyer by night. As one of the story lines plays through (a spoof of Cape Fear), Assante's legal assistant warns him that a client whose case he lost is getting out of prison. She tells him he needs to be careful because this guy has promised to kill him. Assante laughs it off. He is warned repeatedly, but makes some startling statements (which make them humorous).

One character tells Assante (playing Ned Ravine): “I'm very concerned about him, Mr.Ravine. He said you were a two-bit shyster... and he's going to rip your head off and use it for a bowling ball!”

Assante replies, “I'm sure the experience wasn't all negative. He probably made a lot of friends.”

To faxed death threats, Assante says, “He's just working through his anger, trying to find a constructive outlet. Trust me, I spent a lot of time with him when I was preparing his case. He's really a very sweet, sensitive human being.”

He assures his assistant, “He doesn't mean it.”

“But, he spit at you in court,” she says.

“He didn't spit at me. He spit at the whole legal system. I was just in his way.”

Both The Jerk and Fatal Instinct illustrate people painfully unaware that they are in imminent danger while they blithely carry on their everyday lives. They are faced with it. The facts are unavoidable. The conclusions are evident. The danger is real. Yet they continue as if it is not a problem and assume any anger on the part of the other party is actually directed somewhere else - certainly not at them. And, in their silly way, these two films illustrate America.

In November, 1979, a group of Iranian students seized the American Embassy - American soil - in Tehran, taking 52 Americans hostage. The American government seemed unable to handle the problem. An ill-fated rescue attempt crashed in the desert. The hostages were held for 444 days. And the war was on.

From then on, sporadic accounts of Americans being kidnapped and killed came out of the Middle East. Between 1982 and 1992, more than 30 westerners were kidnapped in Lebanon alone.

In April, 1983, a truck loaded with explosives was driven into the U.S. Embassy compound and exploded, killing 63 people. In October, 1983, another truck carrying over 2500 pounds of explosives was driven into the Marine Corps headquarters in Beirut and exploded, killing 241 American servicemen and wounding another 100. In December, 1983, another truck loaded with explosives rolled into the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait and killed 6, wounding another 80.

In September, 1984, another truck bomb was driven into another U.S. Embassy in Lebanon and detonated, killing 24 people.

In December, 1984, tactics widened. A Kuwaiti airliner was hijacked and flown to Tehran, where the hijackers demanded the release of the “Kuwait 17”, those responsible for the Kuwait bombing. The demand wasn't met, and the hijackers killed two Americans on board. In April, 1985, a restaurant popular with off-duty American military was bombed. In June, 1985, a TWA flight was hijacked and forced to land in Beirut. They, too, demanded the release of the “Kuwait 17” as well as 700 other Shiite Muslim prisoners. When these demands weren't met, a U.S. Navy diver on board was shot to death, his body dumped on the tarmac. In August, 1985, a VW loaded with explosives was driven into the main gate of Rhein-Main Air Force Base in Germany, killing 22. In October, 1985, four gunmen hijacked the cruise ship, Achille Lauro. They killed a 69-year-old disabled American tourist. April, 1986 - a popular spot for American military troops was bombed in West Berlin, killing one American. The U.S. retaliated with an air strike to one of Libya's president's residences. Two days later, the bodies of three American University of Beirut employees were discovered shot to death. In December, 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 was blown up over Scotland. Over 260 people died.

The war had moved from the Middle East to Europe. In 1993, it came to America itself. In January, 1993, two CIA agents were shot to death entering CIA headquarters in Virginia. In February, 1993, a group of terrorists drove a van full of explosives into the garage of the World Trade Center, killing 6 and wounding over 1000.

The attacks continued. In November, 1995, a car bomb in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, blew up at the U.S. military headquarters and killed 7 American service men and women. A truck bomb in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, destroyed a U.S. Air Force barracks, killing 19 and injuring more than 500. In Kenya and Tanzania, two U.S. embassies were attacked simultaneously in August, 1998, killing 12 Americans and killing and wounding literally thousands of Kenyans and Tanzanians. In October, 2000, a boat came alongside the U.S.S. Cole and exploded, killing 17 Navy sailors. And in September, 2001, four airliners were hijacked to be used to attack Washington D.C. and New York City with devastating results. Besides an unknown number of wounded, 3000 Americans lost their lives that day.

Today, most Americans view these as “crimes” and assume that “it's the oil cans” or “they're just getting it out of their system”. It's not a war, and it's not personal. It's not about us; it's our government they hate. And we begin to sound, for all the world, like the painfully naive Navin Johnson or the blithely foolish Ned Ravine who are both sure they aren't the targets.