ubertuber

I think I understand why you say this, but I disagree.

Our current leadership has attempted to paint a picture that the WTC bombings, the Cole bombing, 9/11, and the Iraqi insurgency are the work of people who "hate our freedoms", as if the tension between Islamic extremists and the Western world was a sort of abstract principal-based war akin to the cold war. To be honest, this seems a little far-fetched. There's a sort of black-and-white us vs. them mentality involved in this picture, and it is part of what predicates the entire "war on terror" approach. It also doesn't treat the people who are acting against us as the complex individuals that they surely are. While talking about "terrorists" and "terrorism" as people and acts that have grown in response to prompts from the outside is definitely out of fashion, I think understanding the motivation of people who are trying to kill you has to come before getting them to stop killing you. The only other way is a contest of brute force - kill them dead before they do us.

I think, at least in part, that our antagonists view themselves as reacting to definite provocation. Whether or not we think this is true or justification enough is moot - after all, bullets fired and bombs exploded in error are just as deadly as those with just cause. Further, I postulate that the provocation these people are responding to is not as simple as one or two events in which they feel their group (whether ethnic, religious, or national) was wronged by the US. I think it is the sum of many small provocations which have added up to an enormous grievance. US-Israeli policy (for better or worse), US relations with oil-based regimes (think Saudi Arabia), the use of other countries' political struggles as pawns in the cold war (think Afghanistan), the aftermath of colonialism (think Iraq, and though we weren't the colonial power at work, we've inherited the mantle of Anglophonic empire from the Brits), US destabilization of regimes (think Iran), our military presence (think Saudi Arabia again), our willingness to act in concert with unsavory proxies (think Pakistan), and the constant onslaught of our culture (think about our media's relentless and overwhelming influence) add up to a substantial influence, and I haven't even mentioned religious/ideological differences yet. At best we are seen as meddlesome, at worst as outright invaders. As tactless as this phrase may seem here, to refer to death by a thousand papercuts is outrageously apropo. A real war on terror would be waged on the influences that create terrorists, not just the people who become them. To reduce ourselves to attempting to kill them faster than they kill us is to fight a dumb war with smart bombs - we're working hard for little result, if not against our own long-term interests.

For this reason, the fact that a movie like Valley of the Wolves — Iraq is received so popularly (in Turkey!! not like we're talking of Syria or Iran here) troubles me. The fact that we consistently export an image of ourselves and of other nations that is almost as unbalanced also bothers me. I'm not offering a solution here (too complex for me at this point), but I am commenting on the atmosphere. I think it's worth paying attention to.

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Cogito ergo spud -- I think, therefore I yam