Homeland shows just how poorly the US handles global crisis like the Covid-19 Pandemic

I wrote this article before the final season of Homeland began streaming on Hotstar in India. I find this benchmark setting show’s final season relevant and reflective of America’s failed international policies regarding all things that matter. Marking a villain of China might be convenient at a time when the world economy has shrunk and the world order is imploding, set for a shift. But the fact remains that Europe’s rather petulant sounding economies and the USA, along with our nation, is responsible for having continued travel and trade with China despite dire public health warnings from experts. Money mattered more than lives then till fires were raging. Identifying a bogeyman, in this case, China, and then charging them with real and imagined crimes against the rest of the world is worryingly like what happened to Germany after World War 1. If anything, these responses can trigger a more violent and aggressive counter reaction, leading to conflict and wars.

I share this article so that we can remember where the US has always gone wrong in understanding the world, and we learn from such unresearched and extreme responses.

Homeland has completed its highly successful run on TV worldwide with its final eighth season this year. This time, the show’s central character, Carrie Mathison, a CIA agent suffering from bipolar disorder, is released from Russian captivity and returns to the Middle East for her final stint as a case officer.

This show’s most enduring legacy is not it’s unconditional success. Whatever one might think of it, no one gives it a miss. It’s the debate that Homeland triggered on the ‘othering’of the Arab- Muslim, and Muslims in general in a post 9/11 world where nations were often compelled to function in binaries; to quote US president George Bush, “ You are either with us, or you are with the terrorists.”

This extreme opinion held against a chunk of the world’s population has led to multiple consequences. Tony Blair committed British troops to fishing expeditions against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Iraq, and sealed his fate in UK politics. People could never rationalize why British citizens had to face danger and die overseas in a war that didn’t bother to actually check if there really were weapons of mass destruction. Anti US feelings strengthened across Western Europe and members of the NATO. In a few years time, Iran became a new bogeyman, impacting oil trade for Europe, India, China and others as USA imposed crippling sanctions.

And the Arab- Muslim became a cliché to be viewed with suspicion and judgment across the Western world. So much so that atrocities against the Uighur population by China that violated human rights at a mass level didn’t surface in mainstream western media for quite some time. The Uighurs are a minority Muslim community living around Urumqi, Xinjiang province and has faced harsh state led discrimination as well as exile because of their religious identity for decades.

In academic discourses across universities, Homeland has been called out for it’s black and white portrayal of the Middle East and of Arab Muslims. Popular media has also taken notice of this aspect. The show’s writers are dubbed as ‘all star cast’ in America with celebrated and popular shows to their credit. Most have also been show runners. But the constants here are Alex Gansa and Howard Gordon, who have also been executive producers on 24, a show that Rami Malek refused to act in during his struggle phase because it offered him a cliched character- a brainwashed Muslim youth led into terror.

In more ways than one, Carrie Mathison, the bipolar and committed CIA agent, a patriot who doesn’t know when to stop or pull back, reflects American foreign policy and military strategy post 9/11. It’s an over reaction and an over reach, a battle where one dolls out reconstruction of a nation if people agree to having harbored terrorism (which they didn’t, there’s not much proof of this across most of Afghanistan). It’s a response that didn’t bother to understand granular reality in Arab nations. Homeland has extended this thought with its Muslim characters, those that perpetrate terror and those that collaborate with US authorities to fight terrorism.

The predictive quality of this show and it’s current feel is an outcome of thorough research. Before beginning to write a season, the shows’ writers would spend time in Washington DC meeting employees of the CIA; and also the US State department and the White House . Which is why, the next big terror threat, occupying people’s minds in the business of spying tends to coagulate during ‘spy camp’ as they fondly call these gatherings. Setting up to shoot a terror attack at a Berlin metro station, the team of Homeland was stunned to discover the Paris attacks on Charlie Hebdo and the Bataclan a day before. The next day, on shoot inside a tunnel with Muslim actors, introspection made them wonder if their show had something to do with a caricature of Arab Muslims dominating pop culture.

As Homeland has a uniform point of view on the Arab Muslim- be it a suit wearing businessman, a diplomat, an intelligence operative, or the terrorist- one can conclude that the ‘deep state’ influencing US foreign policy and military strategy has a similar opinion. The binaries exist and continue to function without a break.

In this season, Carrie and Saul, the show’s biggest draws, face themselves and the rationale behind their actions. They repent but don’t change their approach. It also shows the random approach of the Trump adminstration to global issues of foreign policy, trade and conflict; matters that can have deep impact and affect countless lives. When it comes to dealing with the Covid-19 crisis, while Australia strongly demands investigations of China’s approach to the virus’ spread, the US has shared hilarious details like the virus originating in a lab in Wuhan, China. It’s response, while threatening, is straight out of a cowboys and soldiers game. Rather than pay attention to expert opinion and analysis by intelligence agencies or diplomats, the US has used this crisis to mark out China as the new ‘Other’, the bad guy in this movie. These are clear attempts to paper over the reality of it’s own failed internal management of the virus’ spread. But in the long run, such fanning of hatred against China, along with petulant, complaining voices from Europe, can add up to creating a dangerous polarization between world powers. Hopefully, in the long run, like characters in Homeland do, the USA, despite it’s hopelessly inept president, will find reasons to introspect on consquences of it’s actions and words against China.