I had big hopes for this new TV show, both on its premise and on Keifer Sutherland (I guess I still think of him as Jack Bauer in "24"). But halfway through the third (or was it the fourth) episode I turned it off and canceled all future recordings. I guess his wimpiness just got to me, but worse, his portrayal of the Navy Seals sent to capture or kill the prime terrorist, a la the killing of Bin Laden in real life, was more than I could take. They find the target, and hesitate to act because the terrorist and his group are holding a few local children as hostages. They likely could have fired immediately and taken out the bad guys without losing any or many of the hostages by acting quickly, but the very fact that they portrayed the Seals as willing to NOT accomplish the mission out of concern for collateral damage is a disservice to our military. I understand that there would be reluctance to endanger innocent bystanders, especially children, but to have the Seals, after all the effort to get into the facility and then to find their target act as if it is unthinkable to endanger others just drove me up the wall. Only when one of the terrorists fires first do the Seals fire and complete their mission. Then the show portrays the President as being in anguish over the loss of one man in the accomplishment of the Mission, a Mission that in true life would likely result in multiple casualties. But casualties are a price we must be willing to endure if we are to prevail. So watching Keifer Sutherland portray this totally wishy-washy President, hostage to the Political Correctness of, oh the humanity, of having someone get killed during a military operation was more than I could stomach. I don't blame Sutherland of course, he is just an actor. I blame the writers and producers of the show who obviously have a very limited and slanted view of our elite military forces.
Just imagine if our real aviators in WWII had refused to drop their bombs on German or Japanese cities because they knew that innocent children would be killed along with the military targets, or if Col. Tibbets had refused at the last minute to release the A-bomb from the Enola Gay over Heroshima because of all the civilians residing in Heroshima. Unimaginable.
As an aside, this whole episode made me think about the real life incident and the movie portraying such, "Lone Survivor" with Mark Wahlberg. If we ever needed to see what happens when a real military operation is compromised by unduly emotional concern for other than the Mission, this is it. My hope is that our actual military watching "Lone Survivor" will come to the necessary conclusion about how to react when ordinary human concerns endanger the success of their operation. And I likewise hope that if they watch "Designated Survivor" they will understand the fiction of the portrayal of the Seals and not use it as a guide for their real reaction in a critical moment.
Just imagine if our real aviators in WWII had refused to drop their bombs on German or Japanese cities because they knew that innocent children would be killed along with the military targets, or if Col. Tibbets had refused at the last minute to release the A-bomb from the Enola Gay over Heroshima because of all the civilians residing in Heroshima. Unimaginable.
As an aside, this whole episode made me think about the real life incident and the movie portraying such, "Lone Survivor" with Mark Wahlberg. If we ever needed to see what happens when a real military operation is compromised by unduly emotional concern for other than the Mission, this is it. My hope is that our actual military watching "Lone Survivor" will come to the necessary conclusion about how to react when ordinary human concerns endanger the success of their operation. And I likewise hope that if they watch "Designated Survivor" they will understand the fiction of the portrayal of the Seals and not use it as a guide for their real reaction in a critical moment.
