In
The Siege, nominated for the best film of 1998
raising consciousness of the need to protect both democracy
and human rights, Edward Zwick (director of Courage
Under Fire and Glory) poses a hypothetical: What if
terrorism graduated from retail bombings to wholesale slaughter
in New York City? What would government authorities do? Would
the conventional FBI and local police departments be shuffled
into the background by a declaration of martial law? After
all, President Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas
corpus during the Civil War, martial law was imposed on the
South after the Civil War, Japanese Americans were incarcerated
arbitrarily during World War II, and the Territory of Hawai`i
was under military rule after December 7, 1941. In this film,
the military does indeed impose martial law in Brooklyn, rounds
up Arab-looking Americans, and sees torture of prisoners as
a necessary step to root out terrorists. However, the protagonist
forces the military to back down when he points out that martial
law so abandons democratic values as to raise the ante on
terrorism. The film also makes the point that if terrorism
gain a foothold in the United States, this could be because
terrorists have been trained by the U.S. military for foreign
low-intensity warfare and then provided sanctuary in the United
States. Although many film critics found the political statement
to be too didactic, the film clearly is intended to tell filmviewers
to be watchful of their liberties, which can be jettisoned
too easily by powerful forces, and to note that terrorism
is one of Washington’s exports. MH
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