Remember Karen Hughes and Laura Bush's efforts to lower the levels of anti-Americanism in the Arab world? They're not working. The good news is that at least we didn't print those cartoons that are making them froth at the mouth against the Europeans. The bad news is that a new film, Valley of the Wolves, takes Arab anti-Americanism to new levels - and it was produced by and has become the biggest hit in our closest Arab ally, Turkey. Billy Zane plays a Christian U.S. soldier "sent by God" who leads a squad of U.S. soldiers as they burst into an Iraqi wedding, slaughter most of the party, shoot the groom in the head and cart the rest away to Abu Ghraib where Gary Busey, a "Jewish doctor" removes their organs and sells them to rich people in New York, London and Tel Aviv.
The worst part of this ugly, distorted and anti-semitic film is that it is loosely enough based on actual events to trick already paranoid, anti-American Arab audiences into believing that is all true. As reported in the Washington Post yesterday:
"Valley of the Wolves Iraq" opens with a true story: On July 4, 2003, in Sulaymaniyah, northern Iraq, troops from the U.S. Army's 173rd Airborne Brigade raided and ransacked a Turkish special forces office, threw hoods over the heads of 11 Turkish special forces officers, and held them in custody for more than two days. The Americans said they had been looking for Iraqi insurgents and unwittingly rounded up the Turks because they were not in uniform."
Of course, if the out-of-uniform soldiers were Swedish, they would not have been mistaken for insurgents. And if the U.S. soldiers understood foreign languages they would have known right away that the Turks were speaking Turkish and not Arabic.
The wedding party massacre in the film probably refers to the accidental bombing of a wedding back in 2004 that the Pentagon still lies about despite the AP's reporting of a videotape proving the Iraqi's claim. The horrible incident wouldn't still be resonating with Arab audiences quite so much if we had admitted our mistake right away and aggressively instituted policies so that it would not happen again.
This odious film is yet another reminder that we have already lost the war in Iraq. The war for the hearts and minds of the Iraqis and the greater Arab world, bungled from the beginning, has been lost miserably by this administration. Every time another soldier dies or is dismembered or blinded over there he dies for nothing but the incompetence of our current regime.
Note to Gary Busey and Billy Zane: I assume you two are as against this senseless war, as I am, but what the hell were you thinking? Mr. Busey, your role as a Jewish vivisecting vampire is inexcusable. I don't care how much you scrambled your brains after that motorcycle accident, you're a pig, fanning the flames of ignorance that endanger all of us Westerners daily. And Mr. Zane, you were already perhaps the worst actor of your generation, now I have even less respect for you. Our soldiers already have it hard enough thanks to incompetent leadership, inadequate equipment. Your vile portrayal of them only makes them more of a target.