HARRY CALLAHAN'S DILEMMA: Why the "War on Terrorism" Will Damn America's Soul

Dirty Harry was one of the first cultural artifacts in what would eventually be an enormous mass media backlash against the progressive gains of the 1960s. Harry Callahan is San Francisco's avenging stormtrooper, brutally violating civil rights while his audience can't help but cheer him on; in fact, to the manipulative credit of the makers of the film, and Clint Eastwood's charisma, it is quite difficult for film viewers to resist his fascist allure. By the film's end, Harry asks Scorpio if he feels lucky: the narrative is such that audiences almost beg the psychotic killer to reach for his gun. When he does and Harry blows him away, we are satisfied. Dirty Harry helped to give an emotionally powerful mythology to Nixon's "War on Crime" rhetoric--it is no accident, I think, that the film is set right smack dab in the middle of one of the USA's most liberal cities.

(To be fair, the film is, in fact, more sophisticated than I am saying, with some subtle nuances that play against Harry's violent contempt for civil rights--in fact, to this day, Eastwood denies that the film promotes fascism; he says it's "anti-authortarian." For the most part, however, the message that the film strongly pushes is clearly a mandate for cops to gleefully violate the Constitution while apprehending crooks.)

However, Dirty Harry's sequel, Magnum Force, throws a wild card into Callahan's ideology. Harry is confronted with the dark and distorted logical conclusion to the argument that he makes in the first film. A secret quartet of crack-shot rookie traffic cops conspiring with Harry's superior, Leiutenant Briggs (Hal Holbrook), acts as an anti-Mafia death squad, dramatically decreasing organized crime in San Francisco. Harry is appalled--these new guys go too far. Harry, of course, deals with the situation in typical form and, of course, his murderous ways are entirely satisfying on an emotional film-viewing level. This is, however, simply a deus ex machina, a plot device that resolves the movie's story but not its themes. Magnum Force asks an enormous moral question that inconspicuously goes unanswered.

This, then, is Harry Callahan's dilemma: at what point does the ruthless efficiency of violence and murder become unacceptable?

This is also America's dilemma. Terrorism (as defined by Bush, rather than being inclusive of state-sponsored terrorism, which actually makes for a better definition) is used by desperate people who have a massive grievance against an institution or a state, but do not have an army with which to make war. The United States cannot possibly wage "War on Terrorism" because, by definition, terrorists have no military with which to fight. Blasting civilian populations in the Islamic world will not end terrorism. It will, however, inspire even more terrorism in retaliation for very real injuries inflicted by the United States. The State Department and the Department of Defense agree: it's called "blowback."

How will the American warmongering establishment react when it becomes clear that its military adventures have been utterly ineffective? My best guess is that they will do what the death squad in Magnum Force did: turn up the heat. So, too, will the forces of Islamic terrorism. And, then, so will the US. And so will they. And so will we.

Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (who Bush called "a man of peace") is already an expert on this dynamic.

The dark and distorted logical conclusion to this line of thinking can be seen in the history books. The Nazis, in retaliation for "terrorism" or partisan resistance, massacred entire villages. American soldiers slaughtered the elderly, women, and children at My Lai and hundreds of other villages during the Vietnam War. Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet ruthlessly eliminated his political opposition at the National Stadium in Chile. Salvadoran right-wing para-military soldiers murdered liberation theologist and Cathloc Archbishop, Oscar Romero, while he said mass. It has already begun anew in Afghanistan.

(It is important to note that, except for the Nazis, from whom our military learned, all of the above mentioned examples involve the US government in some way).

This is our future if we continue along these lines: the US will continually escalate its own violence and killing; all the while, terrorism will escalate. Our future will be less like Dirty Harry and more like Mad Max or Brazil. This is the end of morality for our people. The very soul of America will turn from its traditional tarnish to a deep, dark, wretched rot. I know that President Bush, as a fundamentalist Christian, believes in Hell. I wonder if he ever fears going there.

some research also done at ClintEastwood.net

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