rssJack Bauer in Kabul?
Thursday, June 11, 2009 at 1:36 pm
- 4 Comments
’24′ is hardly a template for counterinsurgency, as it glorifies brutality, particularly toward Muslims who may or may not be terrorists, rather than emphasizes protecting a population from brutality. But Center for a New American Security CEO-in-waiting Nate Fick just told a bizarre anecdote about talking with someone who was considering broadcasting ’24′ in Kabul. Fick was gobsmacked: Wouldn’t it offend Afghans to see Muslims being tortured by screaming blond Americans? Apparently not, said his interlocutor, who had polling data indicating that the only thing potential viewers cared about was whether the targets of the beating would be Afghan.
Fick was about contending that Afghans don’t really care so much about broader Islamic movements. But still: if it’s not so problematic to broadcast television shows about Americans beating the crap out of Muslims in the name of counterterrorism, the Obama administration might as well release those torture photos. Not that Fick thinks that it ought to; this is just a weird, weird anecdote.
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4 Comments
Comment posted June 11, 2009 @ 12:06 pm
Hello Mr. Ackerman,
I read WI almost hourly. Congrats on a job well done. I thought it interesting that you were quite so surprised that Afghans would let torture scenes against Muslims slide as long as they weren't Afghan. I am an ethnographer of several minority Muslim populations in Asia, and I can report that this same sentiment prevails among most non-urbanite populations in China and South Asia…though the picture is changing a bit with the sustained idiocy of US policy that can be viewed as offensive to justice. Sooner or later this challenge to basic justice was bound to be appropriated by ordinary Muslims as targeted at them…though this is, as I say, not as prevalent as we tend to imagine. The divisions within and between Muslim countries have tended to trump the common challenges to a generalized Islam. It IS a weird anecdote, but it is also a revelatory reminder that our own popular imaginary about Muslims and Asia seems to sustain a significant mystified understanding of them and that area.
KC
Washington DC & Cambridge MA
Comment posted June 11, 2009 @ 3:31 pm
Thanks for the informed observations. I have to say I was mostly taken aback by the idea of broadcasting 24 in Kabul in general, but your point is well taken.
Comment posted June 11, 2009 @ 7:06 pm
Hello Mr. Ackerman,
I read WI almost hourly. Congrats on a job well done. I thought it interesting that you were quite so surprised that Afghans would let torture scenes against Muslims slide as long as they weren't Afghan. I am an ethnographer of several minority Muslim populations in Asia, and I can report that this same sentiment prevails among most non-urbanite populations in China and South Asia…though the picture is changing a bit with the sustained idiocy of US policy that can be viewed as offensive to justice. Sooner or later this challenge to basic justice was bound to be appropriated by ordinary Muslims as targeted at them…though this is, as I say, not as prevalent as we tend to imagine. The divisions within and between Muslim countries have tended to trump the common challenges to a generalized Islam. It IS a weird anecdote, but it is also a revelatory reminder that our own popular imaginary about Muslims and Asia seems to sustain a significant mystified understanding of them and that area.
KC
Washington DC & Cambridge MA
Comment posted June 11, 2009 @ 10:31 pm
Thanks for the informed observations. I have to say I was mostly taken aback by the idea of broadcasting 24 in Kabul in general, but your point is well taken.
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