W: The Dark Knight?

I've seen the movie myself. Comparing the President with Batman may look a little silly at first, but there are indeed plenty of parallels between the plot of The Dark Knight and the War on Terror.

For example: the media and some Gotham City citizens accusing Batman - the hero trying to save their own city for escalating the violence by going after the evil doers and causing more harm to the community than good; the scene with the eavesdropping machine, capable of listening to all cellphone conversations in the city - unfortunately, the only device available to Batman capable of locating the bad guys in time and stop an imminent massacre. Then there is also the dilemma confronting our President, the military and the intelligence services: if sometimes the only effective way to fight pure evil is to take the gloves off, get down and dirty and bend the rules, is it OK to go on that road as long as it saves save innocent lives in imminent peril?

There are many others, but I don't want to go into more details and spoil the plot as if any of you didn't see this movie, then you don't know what you are missing.

Here is Andrew Klavan from WSJ with a nice analysis of the parallels between the fictional Batman character and Dubya:

What Bush and Batman Have in Common
By ANDREW KLAVAN
July 25, 2008; Page A15
Wall Street Journal


A cry for help goes out from a city beleaguered by violence and fear: A beam of light flashed into the night sky, the dark symbol of a bat projected onto the surface of the racing clouds . . .

Oh, wait a minute. That's not a bat, actually. In fact, when you trace the outline with your finger, it looks kind of like . . . a "W."

There seems to me no question that the Batman film "The Dark Knight," currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war. Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past.

And like W, Batman understands that there is no moral equivalence between a free society -- in which people sometimes make the wrong choices -- and a criminal sect bent on destruction. The former must be cherished even in its moments of folly; the latter must be hounded to the gates of Hell.

"The Dark Knight," then, is a conservative movie about the war on terror. And like another such film, last year's "300," "The Dark Knight" is making a fortune depicting the values and necessities that the Bush administration cannot seem to articulate for beans.

Read The rest of the article here