I was never much of a comic book fan. I remember being in third grade and being moderately interested in Spiderman or the X-Men -- and let's be honest, they're pretty sweet -- but I never really read many or got into collecting them. For that reason, my knowledge of comic books extends only as far as pop culture does: Superman, Batman, the two above and maybe a few more obscure ones such as Spawn.
I was terribly delighted and invigorated, however, to come across a trailer for a comic book adaptation whose tagline was what has ultimately come to be my political tagline: "People should not be afraid of their governments; governments should be afraid of their people."
I thought it odd that something so mainstream as a blockbuster like "V for Vendetta" would espouse a view so controversial. To me, it is a given -- especially since it is the very notion upon which the United States is built -- but I realize that the widespread view is most certainly the one mentioned by Roger Ebert in his review of the film: "I am not sure V has it right; surely in the ideal state, governments and their people should exist happily together. Fear in either direction must lead to violence." The veracity of his statement notwithstanding, this was what I expected widespread opinion of the film to be. Certainly people wouldn't misunderstand the titular character V's exploding of Parliament and paint it as something befitting jihadists?
I was wrong. Most reviews of the film I have read either say it is a good movie and have some questions about terrorism in it, or that it is bad and does nothing but glorify terrorism. It actually causes a sharp pain behind my eyes every time I think of the fact that there exist people who think that activities to disrupt a totalitarian regime deserve a place in the inferno with Osama bin Laden. First off, it's easy to erase a lot of the controversy because the much-publicized blowing up of Parliament is done at night to avoid killing innocents, done so as to target the government and not the people specifically, and meant to carry on the torch of Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot that V sees himself as carrying.
There is a problem in our War on Terror, and it is the same problem that has plagued the War on Poverty and the War on Drugs. Rather than focusing on the nuances of the topic and saying, "Well, we can't really sum up what we're doing in a three word 'war' but we're going to explain it now anyway," we have -- and yes, I am using a "we" here because I believe we have all been complacent and given our government permission to do this -- allowed rhetoric to blind us to the truth. We never have fought a war against terrorism, and we are not fighting one now. Terrorism is a vaguely defined concept; it does not lurk in the shadows awaiting our well-trained military. However, the perpetrators of terrorist acts against us, the likes of Al Qaeda and such, do. The problem with focusing on "terrorism" and not "the groups that want us dead" is that it gets into very murky territory.
George Washington knew, as general of the armies of the colonies, that he could not fight the British head-on and win. Instead, he and other officers authorized men with poor supplies to contravene the established rules of warfare to hide behind trees and pick off disengaged troops marching to a new camp one by one, as it was the only method to ensure success. Insurgents in Iraq contravene the established rules of warfare to hide behind buildings, call a cell phone attached to an IED and pick off disengaged troops patrolling Iraq as the only method to ensure success. Are those the same thing? If we accept a war against an undesirable method of attack, yes. And yet they clearly are not.
Focusing on the method ignores the meaning behind it. George Washington's orders were the right thing to do then and would be the right thing to do again today, because he was fighting an unjust occupation by the British. The thugs (to borrow an apt term from President Bush) who do seemingly similar things in Iraq today are committing one of the worst sins available to man, simply because they seek to rape and pillage what is right and what is good.
Is V a terrorist? By common definition today perhaps, and even probably, yes. Is that an appropriate term for him? No. If he is a terrorist, then so too is Klaus von Stauffenberg, the man executed for the failed assassination on Hitler who placed a briefcase bomb under a conference table. Sometimes injustice calls for messy means. That, however, in no way equates it with the true terrorism, who use messy means to fight for injustice. Were we citizens in the dystopian United Kingdom envisioned by "V for Vendetta," I should hope we would all be looking for unconventional ways to fight the oppressors. It is a distinctly different idea altogether for terrorists to fight the bringers of justice, and it does not deserve to be lumped under the same doughy, mutable noun.
