Everything Peak TV In the 2000s Tried to Tell Us About Today, Part 2: How Lost Used Sayid's Backstory To Make A Subtle Commentary On America's Role In The War on Terror

It is nearly impossible to talk about the era of Peak TV without bringing up the effect of the War on Terror on so much of the incredible drama we got.

The immediate effect came from 24, which from the start would use so many of the arguments that the Bush-Cheney administration would give for so many of the methods used to fight it. I sometimes belief that the show and so many of the dramas that followed are an unindicted co-conspirator as one of the reasons there was so little public outcry. When millions of people tune in weekly to see Jack Bauer violently berate, torture and kill in order to protect America from global threats – and is sanctioned by both Democratic and Republican Presidents to do so in the name of national security – then it no doubt becomes easier for the average American to accept it.

For all the criticism in liberal quarters the show would receive, the writers never trafficked in euphemisms when it came to what CTU did: they never used such code words as enhanced interrogation. Indeed one of the clearest examples in how far the show was willing to go came in Day 2 when President David Palmer allowed for a Secret Service agent to torture the head of the NSA for information regarding the whereabouts of an atomic bomb. This decision later comes back to nearly destroy his Presidency that same day but he doesn’t back away from deciding to do it.

The same can’t be said of so many of the dramas that followed in its way, particularly police procedurals. Dick Wolf would be more than willing to allow for brutal interrogations of suspected criminals, first on Law & Order: SVU and then on Chicago PD in what was by far the biggest abuse of the so-called ‘cop-a-ganda’ type series that came to be during this century. There were more subtle methods used in Howard Gordon’s follow-up drama Homeland but by and large so much of television was more than willing to give cover for the ends justifying the means.

If there were shows that were willing to flip the script on the ideas raised by the War on Terror, they were mostly to be found in genre dramas. Battlestar Galactica was willing to directly criticize the actions involving the War on Terror and the war in Iraq by moving the show to a setting against human-like Cylons throughout its run. Alias more than a few times would deal with it in between stories about 15^th century Italian mystics. But perhaps the most clever – and subtlest -  criticism came on Lost.

Author’s Note: I am writing about Lost in a separate series of articles and will probably cover much of the same material later on. For this article I will try to focus mostly on aspects related to the subject at hand.

Both at the time and even more so with hindsight I’ve always been impressed with how prominent the character of Sayid Jarrah, played magnificently by Naveen Andrews, was on Lost from the very beginning. Lost debuted in September of 2004, three full years after 9/11 and more than a year after the Iraq War had begun. By this point many Americans had become increasingly xenophobic towards Muslims and they were already more than frustrated with the quagmire Iraq was becoming. In addition 24 had done much to cement the idea that all Muslims were terrorists in the mindset of popular culture as well – and indeed the first prominent scene we have with Sayid on Lost comes when the surviving passengers of a plane crash have to break up a fight between him and Sawyer (who initially looks very much like the kind of redneck who would vote for W in the upcoming election) because Sawyer is convinced he caused the crash. Sawyer, who will have a penchant for nicknames that frequently can verge on offensive, will save his most racist and offensive sobriquets for Sayid over the first two seasons.

While this is going on Hurley (Jorge Garcia), who is quickly becoming the diplomat, talks to Sayid and says casually that he had a friend who fought in the Gulf War. Sayid says he did too. Asked who he fought for he says with neither pride nor shame: “The Republican Guard.”

Even at this period the internet could take on a toxic tone towards characters but there was never any backlash towards Sayid. And that’s frankly astonishing considering that by the time were less than six episodes into the first season we already know Sayid is: a) an Iraqi (in an interesting subtext he says he’s from Tikrit, the birth place of Saddam Hussein, b) a member of the Republican Guard who America was trying to dismantle, and c) a devout Muslim. The last was perhaps the most subtle point but the writers didn’t ignore it: occasionally we would see Sayid chanting and even in the midst of the chaos on the island, we saw him unrolling a rug for prayer.

And at that point we also knew one critical thing. While he initially says he was a communications officer, we would later learn that “Occasionally I helped make people communicate.” This was perhaps the only time he dealt in euphemisms about what he did for the Republican Guard; by the time we got to his first flashback in Solitary we knew very well that he was one of the most skilled torturers in the Iraqi military.

I suspect a huge part of the reason that Sayid very quickly became a fan favorite was because both Andrews and the writers always went out of their way to show just how haunted Sayid was by what he had done to other people. Sayid was one of the most tragic characters on Lost because he yearned not to be a violent man but time and again gave into his violent behavior. He clearly loathed what he did, but he didn’t seem to think he any other options.

I will talk about my own opinions on Sayid’s character in my work on Lost but what I want to discuss in this article is a subtext that was illustrated in the flashbacks revealed in his backstory about how the American government on two critical points in his life was directly responsible for bringing out the worst parts of who he was. Later on, he would claim that he knew that this was who he’d always been but I can’t help but be reminded of how one of the themes of Lost is that every single character was being pushed by other forces on a path they never truly had the freedom to chose that led them to the island. And during the 2000s, one of the biggest forces of all was American exceptionalism.

The first chronological flashback we get of Sayid is in the Season 2 episode ‘One of Them’. In it we see Sayid at the age of 23, a soldier during the first Gulf War. The U.S military breaks in while he is being ordered to destroy Iraqi government documents and Sayid is taken prisoner.

During the episode one of the commanding officers asks Sayid if he speaks English, which he does. They claim they need him to do some translating in order to question his commanding officer about the whereabouts of an American pilot who has been taken prisoner. Sayid tries to get information but Tariq is openly hostile when he answers in Iraqi. (Sayid is very diplomatic about the horrible things he is being told to do.) The officer asks Sayid if they can find a way to make him talk. Sayid backs away.

Sayid is then called in by a member of the Department of Intelligence, known only as Inman. He talks about Sayid’s sense of loyalty and realizes that he might think what he’s doing is a betrayal. He then shows a videotape of a village on which the Republican Guard used sarin gas, and which they claim Tariq gave the order to do so. The Intelligence officer says Sayid knew people in that village. He then hands Sayid a tool box and says that he might have to get creative.

In the scene that follows between Sayid and Tariq we watch Sayid say nothing as he slowly but surely removes a wrench and heads toward Tariq. Tariq becomes first angrier and then more afraid. We cut to outside this room. Sayid emerges and tells the soldiers the pilot is dead and he will take them to the body. The last shot of the flashback shows Sayid’s bloodied hands.

During the final scene Sayid is told by Inman that they’re pulling out of Iraq. Sayid is appalled at what he has done and swears to never do it again. Inman then begins to speak in perfect Iraqi and tells him that he now has a set of skills that my prove useful in the future. He stuffs a roll of hundreds in Sayid’s pocket, cuts him free and the soldiers drive away, leaving him alone in the desert road.

So much of this episode deals with what is happening in the present that the subtext is not obvious even after multiple viewings. In context the intention of Lindelof and Cuse (who wrote the episode) is subtle but there. The government had the means to get the information from Tariq all along but rather than get their hands dirty doing it they chose to force one of their prisoners to torture another. For all their supposed respect for Sayid in their conversations, they essentially saw him as no different than Tariq. The fact that they choose to abandon him after they get what they want with no appreciation for the consequences is perhaps the most subtle criticism of U.S. foreign policy I’ve seen on television during this period: we make a mess of something and we leave it for others to clean up with no sense of responsibility. That Sayid then went on to torture dozens of supposed militants for the Iraqi – including women and children – as a result of American interference is not something they care about, unless it affects their interests.

This point is driven home when we see the events that led Sayid to get on Oceanic 815 in the first place in the flashbacks in the Season 1 episode: “The Greater Good’. In this episode Sayid is walking through Heathrow when he is detained by Agent Cole of the CIA and an agent with Australia named Agent Hewitt.

In their introduction Cole tells Sayid, almost nonchalantly, that they have tracking his movements for some time. (In a subtle nod to this, we see a flash of Sayid on a TV screen in an Army headquarters in America later in the series.) By this point Sayid has long since left Iraq and has been taking on a nomadic existence and its clear the CIA knows why. He’s looking for Nadia, a former Iraqi prisoner who the viewer (it’s not clear if the CIA knows) helped liberate when she was on the verge of being executed  by the Republican Guard eight years earlier. The government offers to help Sayid find the woman he loves but in exchange he has to help them.

A former classmate of Sayid named Essam is suspected to be the member of a terror cell in Sydney. Agent Hewitt tells him that cell is suspected in the theft of 300 pounds of C-4 which they believe will be used in a mass bombing. They want Sayid to resume his acquaintanceship with Essam.

When Sayid and Essam meet (tellingly in a Sydney mosque) Essam tells him his wife died in an insurgent bombing in Iraq. When Sayid gets close to Essam he learns that Essam has been recruited to be a martyr for this movement but he has deep doubts about what he has to do.

But when Sayid tells Cole and Hewitt about this, they see no reason to bring Essam in because he knows nothing about the C-4. They tell him that these cells operate from the top down and that Essam’s only going to know about it hours before the attack. Cole is blunt when she says that Sayid is going to have to talk his friend into blowing himself up.

Sayid is enraged by this and initially refuses, saying he doesn’t care if they arrest him. Cole says that’s fine, they’ll arrest Nadia as an enemy combatant and detain her. Sayid is intimately familiar with what that means in America and is forced to give in.

That the CIA sees no problem in creating a terrorist to stop a terror attack might seem like a far-fetched plot point but it is not far removed from ‘the ends justifying the means’ narrative we see on 24. Just as clear is that America has no real use for Essam or Sayid as nothing but pawns to help save the lives of white people. Sayid’s actions here are despicable but compared to the position the government has put him in, it’s hard to see he has a choice.

However in doing so he manipulates Essam into becoming a martyr involving lies and manipulation. When Essam learns the truth from Sayid, he is horrified by what happened, especially when he learns he did it for Nadia. He takes his life but not before telling Sayid: “I hope she makes you whole.”

Just as they had no use for Essam in life, the government has no use for him in death. When Sayid asks what will be done with Essam’s body, he is told he will be cremated as an enemy combatant. Sayid says this goes against the man’s religion and Cole and Hewitt couldn’t care less. Sayid tells them that he will claim the body and that means staying an extra day to do so  - putting him on Oceanic 815.

As I said earlier in the article one of the big questions is about free will versus destiny. A subtext of that argument is nature versus nurture and considering how many of the characters on Lost are shown to have horrible parents, it’s a question the show comes back to but never answers. Sayid Jarrah will later come to believe that he couldn’t escape who he is, at one point even being told by another character: “You’re capable of things that most men aren’t…It’s in your nature. You’re a killer.” (Lost fans know that the source is unreliable but I won’t reveal it here.) And it’s clear Sayid, at some level, has always believed it.

But as these two prominent flashbacks clearly but subtly illustrate in critical points in Sayid’s life, he was forced on the path he was because America was more than willing to use him for their own ends, then cast him aside when they need him any longer. They were more than willing to use him to achieve goals they could on their own and cast him aside when they were done with him. The fact that, in both occasions, they paid him for his services and thought it was a fair exchange for the emotional scars he had to bear for betraying everything he stood for, is an indictment of the worst aspects of how America sees the world. One almost wonders if Agent Cole, seeing reports of Oceanic 815 crashing and knowing Sayid was on it, was relieved. He could have been a problem down the line, she would have thought before going back to protect American interests at home and abroad. She certainly wouldn’t have cared if he survived.