Arab Spring Comes to the Clone Wars

by Tresob Yr
on 2012-10-14, 18:47:21

Micro-review of CW Episode: A War on Two Fronts

I suppose an advantage of running a Star Wars television show is that it can make it's contemporary references a lot faster than a Star Wars movie.

"A War on Two Fronts" is a case in point. The episode is an overt representation of President Obama's role in the Arab Spring. I'm not even kidding, here. It's write so large you could herd a bantha through it.

The episode begins with the Jedi deliberating what to do with the planet Onderon. The planet is under Separatist Occupation, but part of the population wants to throw the Separatists off.

The Jedi are reluctant to get involved because the planet's monarch oversees a legitimate and acknowledged government. He doesn't appear to be a benevolent monarch, however, despite the Republic's recognition of his authority. Thus, he is a stand-in for the former Egyptian and now late Libyan dictators.

Anakin recommends that the Republic arm and train the malcontents to overthrow their government and banish the Separatist army.

To make the point even more obvious, the Jedi then debate whether to call the malcontents "insurgents" or "terrorists" or "rebels."

By the end of the episode, the insurrorebels have proven themselves more or less nice people and capable of destroying droids. When the least violent and most brainy of the rebels survives his first tussle with the droids, it results in a line that goes "Maybe politicians ought to get themselves a little dirty." One could easily argue that President Obama's unauthorized military assistance to the Libyan rebels was less than clean dealing.

I don't want to make too big a point of it, but the leading rebels of Onderon also share physical characteristics of North Africans.

At the end of the episode, Anakin asks Obi-wan if he's now convinced they did the right thing arming the totally-not-terrorist-freedom fighters...to which Obi-wan replies that he's hope-ful. And we all know what "hope" refers to nowadays. (Hint: it ain't a Skywalker.)