Winning Afghanistan From Home

            The problem with the War on Terror right now is not an issue of surges or diplomacy, of embargoes or conflicting market interests.  The root of our stagnation grows deep in the hills of Hollywood; a region that is not pulling its weight on a national burden.  Politics may dictate the rules and boundaries of our country, but by God no speech can hammer in a message for 90-120 minutes the way a film can, and movies are coming up short in the moment we need them the most.  As a nation there are things that we don’t need; we don’t need romanticized vampires, we don’t need national treasures, and we don’t need an elderly Robin Williams.  We need our hero-model for crisis expediency, straight from the mold that God made and Uncle Sam threw away, we need our Jack Ryan.

            Jack Ryan is a one-size-fits-tall, born in the novel and made on the screen, swashbuckling maniac who has branded his name on books and branded the flag on his heart.  What’s this, some strange anomaly shows up in naval intelligence?  Alec Baldwin’s brainiac Jack Ryan shows up to show us what those secret submarine panels are all about.  Irish thugs show up to kill the queen of America’s best friend in the whole wide world?  Harrison Ford’s action hero Jack Ryan rolls out to do some damage to those punks. 

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In 1990 you get “The Hunt for Red October” in response to the chaos of a crumbling Soviet Empire, in 1992 “Patriot Games” addresses the ongoing troubles in Ireland, and 1994’s “Clear and Present Danger” takes on new the war on drugs.  Ryan harnesses Russian naval unpredictability and what happens?  We get a predictably corrupt democracy under Boris Yeltsin.  Ryan presses the buttons on an unnamed group of Irish terrorists?  Belfast Agreement for a ceasefire in ’98.  Ryan wipes out a drug cartel in Colombia?  American delinquents switch from crack to pot.  It’s almost magical.  With the exception of Bosnia and Monica Lewinsky, all of the major crisis’s facing American life were targeted by Jack Ryan on the screen and then resolved in reality within six years.

            So now, in a post-9/11 world, where on earth is our Jack Ryan?  I’ll tell you where.  He’s in the cellar of his New England home, crying his eyes out over having been clumsily represented by Ben Afleck in “The Sum of All Fears,” a completely inept attempt to insert Jack Ryan into the War on Terror.  And here’s the problem: was this version of Jack Ryan a published analyst, did he push his family behind a tree and run at a car of gunmen, was he even in the right age bracket?  No.  None of the above.  Affleck’s Jack Ryan almost gets the  president killed, and he lets Morgan Freeman die in the process, a feat that was not even realized in “Deep Impact” when a giant meteor hit the earth.  Sure the terrorists get their comeuppance, but a president gets bombed, along with Baltimore’s football stadium, practically ruining their season and injuring about a dozen Raven fans.

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            So, with the world looking on and a surge in Afghanistan looming, I plead with everyone to wait for the media to act.  We need time, time enough for Tom Clancy to pump out a 500 pager in which Jack Ryan squashes terrorists on their own turf in an occupational campaign (two weeks), and then time enough to make a movie about it (three years).  We let the movie ferment for about awhile years, and then we surge for a victory that only the Ryanverse could predict.  While we wait we can cast a techno-savvy Jack Ryan who constantly streams satellite surveillance of the Statue of Liberty onto his blackberry.