I generally dislike Spielberg's movies. He's facile and glib and about as deep as a puddle on the sidewalk. He trivializes everything he touches and now his influence is trivializing the "debate" (such as it is) about counter-terrorism with his movie "Munich."
On Wednesday, December 28, 2005, ABC News Nightline ran a segment discussing "Munich" and the issues it supposedly raises. They interviewed former Mossad agents, including former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and re-ran some of the footage of Jim McKay's great reportage from the Olympic Village while the hostage crisis was going on. It was a real handwringer of sanctimony and moral difficulty. How do you respond to terroristic violence? What can you do to punish the terrorists without guaranteeing a future of further violence? It was all seriousness and furrowed brows except for one small thing.
Nobody mentioned Lillehammer.
Nobody mentioned the death of Ahmed Bouchiki, an Algerian with a Moroccan passport working as a waiter in that Norwegian town. Nobody mentioned that he was assassinated by a Mossad hit team in front of his pregnant wife. Nobody mentioned that he was murdered by mistake, misidentified as a Black Septembrist mastermind. Nobody mentioned that the hit team was rounded up and tried for his murder. Nobody mentioned that all of them were repatriated to Israel within less than two years. Nobody mentioned that Israel still refuses to accept public responsibility for Ahmed Bouchiki's death but has paid his widow a significant amount of money.
For me, this is the core issue: what is our responsibility when we make a mistake, because we will make mistakes. I read yesterday that our US government is now admitting that we may have made a mistake in our "extreme rendition," or as I like to call it, kidnap and torture, policy in at least ten cases. That means we snatched up ten people and sent them to foreign countries where we know they can and probably will be tortured and we got the wrong people. I think this is beside the Canadian Maher Arar and the German Khaled El Masri or maybe not. How many more people will we kidnap and torture or kill by mistake? And how will we make amends for our own mistakes? Will we even mention their names?
I am sick and tired of TV blowhard pundits chewing their cuds over "ticking bomb" scenarios and moral quandaries in the form of sophomoric essay questions. What happens when the miscreant we capture and are certain is connected to that suitcase nuke set to blow in 15 minutes is not who we think it is? What happens when we torture him and maybe kill him and it turns out he is Ahmed Bouchiki, a waiter? What is our responsibility then? That is the only question that matters to me because the only thing I am sure and certain of is that PEOPLE MAKE MISTAKES.
The next time you see some soft-handed bloviator make moral pronouncements about the necessity for torture and murder, please remember Ahmed Bouchiki. We need to make sure that there are no more deaths like his, shot to death in the street while his pregnant wife screams over his body. We need to remember his name.
I see from the reviews of "Munich," that Spielberg does not remember the lesson of Lillehammer nor Ahmed Bouchiki.
PS: I have written about this issue before on my dailykos diary at http://www.dailykos.com/...
There I describe asking Adam Nagourney of the NY Times about this aspect of torture. He responded by asking me about my position on abortion. I regret that I wasn't quick enough to answer, "I believe only aborted fetuses should be tortured."