Burma, MacGyver. Burma.
Tuesday, 8 April 2008 Jacob TomawToday, Jonah and I were watching the MacGyver episode “The Golden Triangle.” The basic plot is MacGyver goes to Burma to get a thing from a shot-down American Air Force jet. While getting thing, he is captured by an opium slaver who controls a village for a junta leader. This all resolves how you might expect for an episode of MacGyver.
At the climax, MacGyver frees himself and chases the slaver away from the village. He tells the villagers, “Well, I guess you are free now.” The mayor of the town accurately answers, “No! They will be back in a few hours with reinforcements and we will all be dead.” Mac was not expecting this. In this moment, I saw the Bush Iraq policy.
This is when roles reverse. MacGyver helps the villagers defend themselves. How do they defend themselves against the coming military onslaught? Ask the Mahdi Army, because they clearly have seen this episode too. MacGyver helps the village build IEDs and some other pitfalls (literally in some cases). Mac and the villagers win easily over the overconfident military.
I story is great entertainment, but it makes me sad. Sad because this is the way things are supposed to be. As a child of the 80’s, America always won. If it was a fight between Americans, the good Americans always won. I know this is just a basic story telling device. However, this was a consistant message of my childhood. This is a vision of America that lived strong in me. This is the vision that makes Americans sure we can do grandios things like nation building.
This vision lived through 9/11. I was confident we would find Osama, destroy Al-Quieda and the Taliban, and create a new Afghanistan. Then we invaded Iraq … and it has been 6 and a half years since 9/11 and no Osama … and it looks like we might repeat in Iran.
It leads me first to ask, “where is MacGyver!?” But then I remember what is more important, there is no MacGyver. This was a myth of America and is only a myth of any state. If someone could convince John McCain this, I might vote for him.