"Obsession - Radical Islam's War Against the West"

"Hey, Marc, you really should check out this movie! It's full of conspiracy theories concerning 9/11!" That was the promise Keith made. So I watched the DVD. The next day I said, "I'm surprised you suggested this movie: it's 105% pro-George-Bush." "It is?", Keith said, somewhat flummoxed, "I don't know about that. What I liked was all the Al-Jazeera outtakes, showing us what the Arabs actually see on their TV sets, all the anti-Semitism, rather than just hearing about it from Fox News."

"Obsession - Radical Islam's War Against the West" is a movie about the War on Terror from a neoconservative perspective. The movie is partly an inspiration of UK-based activists, and features many leading activists fighting against radical Islam:

From the creators of "Relentless," comes a new film that will challenge the way you look at the world.

Almost 70 years ago, Europe found itself at war with one of the most sinister figures in modern history: Adolf Hitler. When the last bullet of World War II was fired, over 50 million people were dead, and countless countries were both physically and economically devastated. Hitler’s bloody struggle sought to forge the world anew, in the crucible of Nazi values. How could such a disaster occur? How could the West have overlooked the evil staring it in the face, for so long, before standing forcefully against it?

Today, we find ourselves confronted by a new enemy, also engaged in a violent struggle to transform our world. As we sleep in the comfort of our homes, a new evil rises against us. A new menace is threatening, with all the means at its disposal, to bow Western Civilization under the yoke of its values. That enemy is Radical Islam.

Using images from Arab TV, rarely seen in the West, Obsession reveals an ‘insider's view' of the hatred the Radicals are teaching, their incitement of global jihad, and their goal of world domination. With the help of experts, including first-hand accounts from a former PLO terrorist, a Nazi youth commander, and the daughter of a martyred guerilla leader, the film shows, clearly, that the threat is real.

A peaceful religion is being hijacked by a dangerous foe, who seeks to destroy the shared values we stand for. The world should be very concerned.

Today, WWIII is raging, but few are aware of it. War has been declared by Radical Islam against the West, but much of the the West, like Chamberlain did in his time, tends to discount the threat, choosing instead to appease it. Today, even those with courage enough to recognize the conflict, fear to identify the enemy, instead calling it a 'war on terror', as if terror—a means of battle, not an enemy—and not some specific group of people, was the foe.

Aside from 9/11, we are today witnessing violent Islamic insurgencies erupting all around the world: In Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand. We see the Russians are fighting Al-Qaeda linked rebels in Chechnya, ... Obsession makes clear that we are facing an enemy intent on destroying us.

We’ve been here before. Obsession also explores the current threat and its surprising parallels with Nazi Germany. We can learn about Nazism by listening to Hitler in his writing and actions - he was a clear thinker who knew that he was battling over the moral foundations of Western civilization. Hitler fought against the 'insidious Judeo-Christian ethics' which had been almost victorious over the ancient values of power and 'might makes right'. In going against the West, Hitler determined he must focus on and destroy the Jews as well, the people who he identified as the source of these sinister Western values. WWII, Hitler's war, showed how deeply he believed his ideas.

And what are the Radical Islamists about? They also express themselves clearly, if only we choose to listen. Obsession will help us listen. The Islamists are now acting out their ambitions and threatening the values of freedom, democracy, respect for human life, and other shared ideals of Western civilization.

Much of the Western world today would like to believe that we have arrived at an era of heightened moral refinement, or that Radical Islam has some legitimate grievances that, once solved, would bring peace and stability. But Radical Islam, a dangerous strain of the world's fastest growing religion, believes the time has come for its final violent victory over the Crusader infidels of America and the West.

Like WWII before it, this is an ideological war of aggression against Western civilization, and like WWII, the Western powers are waking up far too slowly.

Our shared values are at stake. The enemies of the West are not mistaken: the West stands for an ethical system of civilization that threatens them. And they have not come to terms with these values. To the degree that the West recognizes that they are ALREADY in a war for the survival of their democratic civilization, they will resist.

An erstwhile peaceful religion has been hijacked by extremists who are seeking to transform our world. Obsession will help people appreciate that freedom itself is at stake today. Western civilization should be concerned.

As made clear by their timeline of terrorist actions, the movie emphasizes that we are facing a single, unified threat.

Nevertheless, there are strange omissions that make one wonder. Film footage shows Bosnian Muslims attacking an unidentified Christian church. The church is probably either Serbian or Croatian, and begs the question of whether the moviemakers feel we should have allowed the 1994/95 genocide against Bosnian Muslims to proceed. Mass killings are one answer to supposed religious extremism, after all.

(Which brings up an old memory - an excellent essay from 30 years ago - was it Czeslaw Milosz? - regarding going through the ruins of a Serbian church desecrated by the Communists - history repeats itself yet again)

Graphic footage is also shown of "American civilians" being burned alive in their vehicle and dragged through Iraqi streets. But these killings are likely not of American tourists on a jaunt, but rather the mob attacks on four Blackwater security contractors - mercenaries who defied U.S. Marines and travelled undermanned through Fallujah, Iraq, in March, 2004.

Constant invocation is made of the threat once posed by the Nazis, and its equivalence to today's threat. There are, indeed, many disturbing parallels, and particularly for people who have lived in Arab societies - Nonie Darwish, for one - their testimony can be compelling.

But it's one thing to resist tyranny from within a society, and to aid those resisting; it's another thing altogether to invade one of the primary centers of the Islamic world from without, with only 140,000 troops, and with the expectation of a cheery welcome.

What I found most galling was the invocation of Edmund Burke's famous quote:

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

and to openly state that every generation has to renew the gift of freedom through sacrifice, and that THIS battle was our generation's task. Very heady stuff, and very appealing to the idealistic young, but whom may I ask, decided that THIS task is ours? To me, it sounds like a call to arms. It sounds like jihad, but a Western variant - the Crusades, 21st-Century version. The movie's title is very revealing: it's about "Obsession" all right, but not just from the radical Muslim point of view.

As the Cold War made clear, the best answer to foreign aggression isn't rollback, and isn't appeasement, it's containment.

And no good 9/11 conspiracy theories besides! What was Keith thinking?