iraq and battlestar galactica

Is President Bush a Cylon?  Maybe not, but the parallels between Battlestar Galactica and the war in Iraq are still plentiful — and purposeful.

At the end of Season 2, Galactica took a major detour that stunk every bit as bad as After M*A*S*H. Two seasons of plot progression were scrapped by jumping one year ahead and plopping the remnants of humanity on a dirtball in the middle of nowhere, where they began scratching out a meager existence without running water or hair salons. The move was awkward, it was unjustified, and it did not smell like the Galactica viewers had come to appreciate.

The writers redeemed themselves with the Season 3 premiere, proving that the new scenario (Cylon occupation of a human colony) can be just as complex, conflicted, and intellectually stimulating as everything that came before it. (Whew — I’ll keep watching after all.) There’s a reason Time picked Battlestar Galactica as the top TV show last year, and the new plot direction reinforces the wisdom of that choice.

The premiere also suggested why the writers made such an abrupt U-turn: they’d devised a new political metaphor and were itching to explore it. What seemed at the end of Season 2 to be an unfolding analogy of Nazism and the Holocaust is instead a recasting of America’s presence in Iraq. Consider:

• Cylons take control of New Caprica in order to teach humans to improve their way of life. America took control of Iraq and replaced Saddam Hussein’s autocratic regime with a democracy.

• Baltar is a puppet president who heeds Cylon wishes. The government in Iraq is widely viewed as a puppet government that heeds American wishes.

• Cylons detain humans indefinitely without charges, abusing and torturing them for information. America detains terrorist suspects indefinitely without charges. Incidents of detainee abuse and torture have made headlines.

• Cylons debate their methods and question whether they’re accomplishing the purpose of instructing humanity. Americans debate our methods and question whether true democracy and self-rule will succeed in Iraq.

• The New Caprica Police recruits humans to serve in the place of Cylons; these recruits face hostility from human insurgents and are targeted for terrorism. Iraqi police are recruited in the place of American soldiers to establish security; they face hostility from Iraqi insurgents and are the frequent targets of terror attacks.

• Cylons free Colonel Tigh from detention, knowing that he will lead an insurgency that will justify Cylon crackdowns; Tigh’s insurgents engage in terrorism that includes suicide bombings. Osama bin Laden is widely rumored to have been allowed to escape capture by US forces, allegedly to justify America’s war on terror; he is now part of an insurgency leadership that disrupts American occupation through terrorism, including suicide bombings.

• In discussing suicide bombings, Roslin tells Baltar, “Desperate people use desperate measures.” The same rationale is widely given by American war protestors in order to defuse the abhorrence of terrorism that otherwise would fuel support for America’s war on terror. “What other choice do Iraqis have beside terrorism?” war protestors argue. “They’re desperate because America has made them desperate.”

Writers who use their craft to explore current moral and ethical issues should be appreciated. Viewers need to keep in mind, however, that Battlestar Galactica reverses the poles drastically. While it’s helpful for us to walk a mile in Iraqi shoes — Galactica entices us to do this by setting us up to identify with humans (Iraqis) instead of Cylons (Americans) — it must be noted that the Cylons replaced a functional democracy, whereas America replaced Saddam Hussein’s brutal dictatorship with democracy and self-rule.

It’s precisely this kind of twist, this balancing of opposite poles, that makes the questions raised by Galactica in every season so thought-provoking. Given an insidious, dictatorial occupying force (Cylons, not Americans), would suicide bombings against military-only targets be justified? In Iraq the question of such drastic terrorism is easily answered (Iraqi insurgents target civilians as well as military and support dictatorship). Galactica viewers, however, are tempted to empathize with those who use suicide bombings, which in turn helps us to probe the psyche of our Iraqi foes.

Sadly, some Americans will draw perfectly tight, unnuanced equations between Iraq and Galactica, suggesting that America is no better than the Cylons. Considering the writers’ increasing efforts to add dimension to Cylon motivations, some war protestors will even argue that a Cylon would be preferred to the purely evil George Bush. Such demonizing is the product of little minds and should be treated as such. The war in Iraq is complex, and Galactica is complex. We should respect artists who treat us to such intelligent and complex work by contemplating and discussing it, not rolling it up into a rhetorical bat to bash our political opponents.

On the other hand, war supporters might question Battlestar Galactica’s writers for creating a scenario in which we are led to frown on America’s efforts to promote democracy, and root instead for terrorists seeking to reestablish a dictatorship. But Galactica is bold enough to trust viewers to think more deeply than this. Despite its complexities, the reality in Iraq is clear: though humans despise Cylons for imposing dictatorship, the general Iraqi population does not despise democracy. If anything, the world has been inspired by Iraqi citizens who have turned out, despite terrorist threats, in astonishing and unpredicted numbers to exercise their new right to vote.

That spirit of resistance and optimism is the one captured by the human insurgency in Galactica, and the one we should all be cheering — both on TV and in Iraq.

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