However this season is shaping up to be very different, as it is a radical shift from the previous seasons. CTU has been disbanded, and instead of taking place in Los Angeles, the action is now in Washington D.C. The biggest difference however, is in the terrorist threat. Instead of using external weapons of mass destruction, the terrorists hijacked a module (called a CIP device) that allows for breaches of the government's firewall systems to cause massive damage internally. The conspiracy (which includes members of the President's own staff) is led by a Colonel Ike Dubaku of the fictional country of Sangala, who in the last episode was stopped by Jack Bauer & Crew just in the nick of time before he killed tens of thousands of Americans by using the hacking module to release toxins from an insecticide plant in Ohio.
The reasons for Colonel Dubaku's aggression are very simple in this season, far from the complicated self-rightousness of the threats in previous seasons. Dubaku is angered about America's interventionism in his country of Sangala.
The events of season seven so far ought to give further credence in the argument for a non-interventionist foreign policy as advocated by America's Founding Fathers.
President Taylor has an armada on the African coast, ready to invade Sangala and forcibly evict the sitting regime, which is carrying out a genocide on hundreds of thousands of Sangalans. The armada causes Dubaku to enter the United States and bribe government officials with diamonds. He then gets ready to kill American citizens.
This is the classic example of the CIA's term of 'blowback' that Ron Paul cited so frequently in his 2007-8 campaign for the presidency. While we as Americans in no way sympathize with Dubaku (and more importantly, his real life counterparts), what ought to be the U.S. government's priorities?
The reason a government supposedly is set up is to protect the people living within its borders from aggression. This is the only reason the Founders set government up and wrote the Constitution. Even in today's age of Democratic-Socialism and pervasive dependence on the government for nearly anything imaginable, the core premise for its existence is still, fortunately, the Enlightenment ideal that it is a necessary evil to protect individuals against aggressors.
Yet in 24: Season Seven, we once again see how flimsy this notion is, and it is once again turned on its head. The United States government has again stuck its big nose where it did not belong, which fostered resentment resulting in a strike to the said nose. Unfortunately, it is the innocent American people who now must suffer because of their misguided government.
I reiterate that we should never sympathize with people like Dubaku who are causing the deaths of innocent people in a foreign land. However, the United States government is mandated to protect the American people through the Constitution, and nowhere in that document is permission given to the President to send an overseas armada to a foreign country without a congressional declaration of war.
In 24: Season Seven, war was not declared on Sangala, and I find nowhere in the events leading up to the season that it had anything to do with United States national security. What I am able to deduce so far is that the president unilaterally sent an armada to Sangala to stop Dubaku's faction from continuing to destroy innocent life.
While this is indeed, a noble purpose, it is not authorized under the Constitution, and more importantly, has nothing to do with U.S. national security. However, due to the government's foreign involvement, it becomes a matter of national security when the terrorists then come to kill Americans as a response!
To put it more simply: the government created the problem, then Dubaku reacted and actually threatened Americans. Now, the government has to solve the problems that it created!
Unfortunately, this isn't just a work of fiction. This is happening in real life, right now. This is what caused the attacks of September 11th and started the "War on Terror" (which is only adding fuel to the fire).
For too long, the United States has told the people of the world what to do and how to live. We see this perfectly in Iraq by trying to bring American "democracy" to that country. It is certainly not surprising that many people see this as a foreign invader that is occupying their country and taking control. Naturally, this is going to generate resentment, and all too often, violence to protect themselves against what they (the people in the countries America sends troops to or controls via proxy) see as aggression on their way of life.
This should not be difficult for us to understand. Americans went through the same thing. We call it the American Revolution. The colonists were unhappy with new taxes, and mounted their protests against them. The British government responded with ever-increasing authoritarianism, highlighted by the Intolerable Acts.
The most vile of these was the Massachusetts Government Act. This made self-government nearly impossible, and it is not surprising that the rest of the colonies sympathized with Massachusetts and recognized that their way of life was also under threat. The first Continental Congress met to discuss this fact in July of 1774. A mere nine months later, the first shots were exchanged at Lexington and Concord, igniting the war of independence.
The insurgency in Iraq is a modern example that ought to show that a foreign power attempting to tell a population how to live has historically gone very wrong and led to much bloodshed. The local populace is deeply resentful of the interference in their lives, and often enough will lead to radicalization, as we saw in the American Revolution with the Patriots eventually unanimously supporting independence from Britain (which was a radical measure and unthinkable even in the Continental Congress of 1774). Similarly, our invasion of Iraq has led to the radicalization of Iraqis in the insurgency in the present.
It ought to have come as no surprise that the attacks of 9/11 occurred. America's imperial presence in the Middle East since the Shah was installed in Iran in 1953 fostered radicalization that led to the deaths of innocent civilians. What's worse, instead of reassessing foreign policy after 9/11, the same imperial trend accelerated in the invasion of Iraq, leading to a greater possibility of other attacks in the future. The effort to prevent these attacks has eroded our civil liberties, all in the name of empire.
One thing that nearly made me fall out of my seat when watching 24: Season Seven was when President Taylor, on explaining her willingness to move forward with the invasion of Sangala even after Dubaku used the CIP device to cause a mid-air collision between two commercial airliners, and threatened an even greater attack, used the reasoning that she was "determined to keep America as a force for good in the world."
We must always watch out with those sorts of statements. No one can clearly define what 'good' is, as it is something very much in the eye of the beholder. This, coupled with the violent nature of government, means forceful conformity to a certain view of 'good,' in effect, telling other people how to live.
The result, as already explained, has been an endless cycle of aggression and backlash. Government cannot decide what 'good' is and then force people to conform to that view. Only an individual can decide this for himself, and then try to persuade others to that view. While most of us would agree that people like Dubaku and what he represents must not be supported, the government forcing us to that view can only create problems, as we are now seeing in the events of this season of 24.
Is it worth it to "keep America as a force for good in the world" even though the consequences may be untold destruction of American lives and the degradation of civil liberties that will surely be done in the name of preventing another such circumstance?
I think not.
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