YES, VIRGINIA, HOLLYWOOD REALLY DOES HATE AMERICA

During the last few weeks some movies have come out that are, in effect, a plea for the case of terrorists. Steven Spielberg’s "Munich" is one of them. (A little known fact is that there was a 1986 TV movie, ‘Sword of Gideon,’ based on the same book, Vengeance, that Spielberg borrowed from freely.)

In "Munich," the murders of the 11 Israeli Olympians are treated as, well, sort of understandable, given the feelings and anxieties of the Palestinians who committed the terrorist act.

Those Israelis, in turn, who have vowed to avenge the murders are depicted as morally not so different from the terrorists. This way, one may assume, we are provided with a "balanced and nuanced" view of both sides in an ongoing, age-old deadly conflict.

One may wonder just how this would have played back after World War II. Had anyone done this with the Nazis, I doubt all this talk about gaining a better understanding of them would have found too many mainstream champions.

But we do not need to go all the way back to the Nazis and how they were depicted on film. What about, say, Enron executives in the movie, "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room"?

Or the villain of the movie "Wall Street"? Or how about the tobacco company executives who have been presented as virtual murderers in several Hollywood vehicles, both on the big and small screens (for example, in "Insider")?

What about as "Erin Brockovich", "Glengarry Glen Ross" and, even earlier, in "The China Syndrome"?

If the intent of those who have given us the recent sympathetic presentations of terrorists were really to provide a deeper insight into the lives and minds of those taking part in the conflict, one would expect that this same motivation would have produced for us numerous complex dramas about the inner lives of the constantly denigrated business executives on television, in novels, and in the movies.

But none of the movies above, or their cousins in other fictional vehicles, ones in which business and capitalism are depicted in the worst possible light, make any effort to get at the possible nuances of the heavies who are targeted.

So you will forgive me for not finding the current explanation for treating terrorists with kid gloves very convincing. Instead, I suspect that what is going on is precisely a tad too much sympathy with terrorists. Why? Among other reasons that come to mind I would place on top the fact that terrorists are all thoroughly anti-American.

Let us not forget that most of the writers and producers in Hollywood — the ones who make a quintessential American institution, namely, business, look so terrible in their various vehicles — are politically sympathetic with the Left. They have been that for a long time.

(Even today, after the true nature of communists has been clearly demonstrated — based on, among other things, KGB and similar archives — there is still far more hostility shown from much of Hollywood against Joe McCarthy than against Joe Stalin — for instance, in George Clooney’s movie, "Good Night and Good Luck".)

No, there is no sudden discovery of subtlety and complexity within the minds of evil people by Hollywood writers and producers. Rather what we have here is terrorist-apologetics, plain and simple. The folks who put out this stuff just cannot work up a genuine disgust of terrorists because, well, most of the terrorists share their anti-American point of view.

That seems to suffice for them to place most terrorism — which, one must keep in mind, consists primarily of killing people who are innocent, among them civilians and many children, and whose only "crime" is to be Americans or Westerners, meaning, they belong to the tribe the terrorists want to wipe out — into a sympathetic light.

The movies in question are, of course, made up, fictional, and fiction at one time used to deal with essentials, not with all the nuances of human personality. Good guys versus bad guys is a theme that plays so widely and well not because we all believe that in actual life those who did immoral things had no complexity about them.

But such complexity didn’t matter much for the sake of the kind of drama shown in the movies or on TV. What mattered is to show the conflict and to indicate how and why the good guys would win.

This sudden decision that the fictional depiction of terrorists must acknowledge their complexities, doubts, inner battles — as if that was totally absent among Nazis or racists or other villains often depicted in such fares — doesn’t appear to me to be concerned with improving the art of film.

Maybe some writers and producers are genuinely interested in digging deeper into the souls of villains. But too many of them seem to be hell-bent on convincing us that the terrorists are not really villains at all but soldiers fighting the right enemy, America.

Tibor Machan holds the R.C. Hoiles Professorship in business ethics and free enterprise at Chapman University in Orange, California.