Martial law movie denzel1/8/2024 Kraft replies, “In this game, the most committed wins.” She later says, “Your quaint laws, they don’t mean shit to these people.” Hubbard objects when he learns the CIA is in the kidnapping business. It is the FBI special agent who viewers are supposed to see as incorruptible. (Remarkably, in a later scene, Hubbard warns against shredding the Constitution to fight terrorism.) Not long after, Hubbard is on the phone asking a judge for a warrant for surveillance against a suspect (Aasif Mandvi) that he is already staking out from his car. Racial profiling and the swarming of an entire community in New York is treated as appropriate. Call your families, find a sleeping bag because nobody is going until we find a strand to pull on,” Hubbard further states. I want you to turn the heat up under every one of your resources, every one.” However, he declares, “I want to rumble every trap, hole, market, community center, every student organization that has ever said a bad word about this country. He acknowledges the willingness of the Arab community to cooperate with law enforcement. She then helped him and a few other militants flee to the United States.Īfter the first terrorist attack, Hubbard addresses an FBI meeting. It parallels the CIA’s own history with Osama bin Laden and the mujahideen in Afghanistan because later we learned she taught Nazhde how to make bombs. He is tied to the very people plotting attacks in New York, which reflects the CIA tactic of arming “rebels” to force regime change. Kraft has a sexual relationship with her source Samir Nazhde, who was part of a group of militants that received funding to oppose Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq. She has a team pursuing their own mission in response to the terrorism threat in New York, which is blowback for the CIA’s rendition against Talal. Though the CIA is not allowed to conduct operations on U.S. Islamic centers of worship are viewed as likely havens for sleeper cells. The CIA kidnaps Sheikh Ahmed bin Talal, a terrorism suspect, and holds him incommunicado refusing to inform the White House that they have him in custody. Army’s 101st Airborne Division as it deploys to New York to enforce martial law.Ī nightmare chain of events unfolds that in many ways foreshadow America’s response to the September 11th attacks. It starred Denzel Washington, as FBI Special Agent Anthony Hubbard in New York, Annette Bening, as CIA agent Elise Kraft, and Bruce Willis, the conniving Major General Bill Devereaux, who commands the U.S. The movie was released in 1998 and based on a story by New Yorker magazine writer Lawrence Wright. It condones abuses of power by the FBI and police as necessary to prevent violence while presenting the CIA and a bad apple military general as devious and untrustworthy. But the filmmakers resisted changes that would have helped the production avoid crude stereotypes.ĭirector Edward Zwick’s insensitivity resulted in a movie that plays like post-9/11 liberal propaganda for a strong response to the threat of terrorism so long as the military and government does not cross certain boundaries. Prior to completion, the movie’s producers met with representatives from the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), along with writer Jack Shaheen, who later authored Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies A People. Shokuri wondered, “Am I in that movie or on a stage in Hollywood?” and, “When does that movie end?”Ĭivil society organizations representing Arab and Muslim Americans protested how “The Siege” portrayed their communities as places uniquely prone to engage in terrorism. “The CIA and FBI were not successful in finding that terrorist group, and the United States Army interfered and gathered all the people of Arabic descent and put them in a land cage or camp just like it happened in Kandahar.” “The movie was about terrorists carrying out terrorist attacks in the United States.” Yunis Shokuri, who was a Guantanamo Bay prisoner for over 13 years, once recalled the plot of “The Siege” when he appeared before a military tribunal. FBI Special Agent Anthony Hubbard (Screen shot from the promotional trailer for "The Siege" and fair use for the purposes of commentary) With each attack, the message of the movie is that traditional law enforcement will not stop the violence coming from within Arab and Muslim communities.
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