24 Lessons For An America At War

The third season of the terrorism drama, 24, currently running on the Fox network, has stirred up a lot of controversy with its depiction of an American Muslim family secretly made up of terrorist killers. Fox has acknowledged the sensitive nature of the plot, running a public service announcement featuring the show’s lead actor reminding viewers that most American Muslims are, well, still Americans, and don’t want to kill anyone. But the show has become much more than simply an envelope-pushing shockfest: in fact, for all its bluster, it’s a fairly decent depiction of all the unresolvable contradictions, moral quandaries, and societal soul-searching faced by a country at war.