Resonance And Revelations
The West Wing rerun on Bravo this evening was “War Crimes,” an episode in which “Leo meets with an officer who had been his superior when he was in Vietnam. The subject is a treaty about forming a permanent body to deal with war crimes. The officer is against it. Leo tells him,
“…systematic extermination of civilians, enslavement, torture, rape, forced pregnancy, terrorism, doesn’t the world need a permanent standing body. . .”
Leo doesn’t get to finish.
“National Sovereignty is at stake. Americans are answerable to no one except their own government and their own laws.”
Finally the guy asks him:
“You remember Operation Rolling Thunder?”
“Yeah. I think I do, yeah.”
“September 1966. . . . You were piloting an F-105 Fighterchief. . . . 355th Tactical Fighter Wing out of Thailand. . . . “
Turns out this guy had given Leo his instructions that day. As the conversation goes on, Leo can’t see what relevance this has.
“It was a military target,” he states with certainty.
“It was a civilian target. . . . There were 11 civilian casualties.”
It takes Leo some time for this to sink in and he finally pulls himself back to the present.
“Why did you tell me that?”
“Because you could be charged and tried for a war crime.”
This episode first aired November 7, 2001 (that, and the summary and quotes above, are taken from The West Wing Continuity Guide).
Today, May 17, 2004, MSNBC has a story that says Bush administration officials received a similar warning from the White House’s top lawyer.
Why The West Wing was my favorite TV show, number two in a series…
