this is the politics of the situation though, it doesn't have anything to do with the troops involved in what we end up choosing to do.
It's an obviously complicated issue. And your plans wouldn't have worked unless we had complete control over the region through military conquest. Bombs and killing made way for control of the region until we pulled out. Otherwise, nothing would have changed in a reasonable amount of time.
What the heck are you talking about? We didn't conquer Egypt. We didn't conquer Afghanistan or Iran back in the 1960s and 70s when they were embracing modern values. Our modern occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan has made them hotbeds for violent extremists. We didn't control anything, and we haven't created any kind of change. That's not something we can do for other people. It's something they do for themselves (though we can certainly help, but killing people doesn't achieve that).
Seriously. Do you know anything about the last fifty years?
You said it well!
I have no doubts it is largely a propaganda piece, just like Zero Dark Thirty was. But I do like Bradley Cooper.
I don't think either of them were, and I actually really liked Zero Dark Thirty. I think you can make a movie that involves the military without it having a stance on patriotism and militarism. I'm sure this sniper guy was heroic. But the conflation of macho militarism with love and loyalty for one's culture and nation is just plain nonsense.
The problem being that the overwhelming "global" culture is American. They don't call it Coca-Colonialism for nothing. Every high street with a Gap, a Starbucks, a McD's, A Walmart etc choking out the native companies, imposing a homogenous alien "culture on TV and the movies as well.
That's true in part, but I don't think it's as overwhelming as you think. Granted, my own experience is limited, but when I was living in Japan, there was no shortage of native culture or companies. There was plenty of KFC, but there were also plenty of places where nobody even spoke English. And this was Kyoto, the city with the largest foreign population in the country.
Meanwhile, here in New York, there's lots of other cultures existing quite comfortably next to more common Americana. Five minutes from my front door are businesses that deal primarily in Arabic, Greek, Spanish, and Japanese. There's a Korean Baptist church a few blocks from me. It seems to me that there's lots of blending going on.
Notably, one of the reasons that Marvel superhero movies are doing so well globally is that their depictions of heroism are broad enough so as not to be tied to American values specifically, but rather appeal to a more global mindset. That's why Captain America is a giant hit in China.
You're right that a lot of American brands are exported, but that's an economic thing more than a cultural one, I think. The corporations that own those brands are becoming more international as well, which is a problem when they become more powerful than the countries they're dealing in. But that's a topic for another day.
