Potential Spoilers Below 

If I’m mistaken and there have been movies in which Islamists where the bad guys, please let me know. ~Michael Fumento

How about True Lies?  Granted, this was a very bad movie (it had Schwarzenneger and Tom Arnold in it, after all), but it was a success at the time and made very explicit that the nuclear terrorists were doing what they were doing for plain jihadi reasons.  It was a movie that made jihadis the villains even before 9/11 had happened–does that count for anything?  How about A Mighty Heart, whose entire raison d’etre is an act of violence carried out by jihadis?  How about World Trade Center?  The story is not principally about the terrorists, but obviously the jihadis are the villains of the piece.  Or Flight 93?  Did I miss something?  Does anyone really think that we have actually been completely lacking in these sorts of movies?  Against these, yes, you will also have the case of The Sum Of All Fears (also a terrible, terrible movie) where jihadis were replaced with a much more universally hated, and non-existent, neo-Nazi threat.  This is ridiculous political correctness and a crazy obsession with long-dead Nazism, but if you think we are at war with “Islamofascists” should it really matter to you whether Hollywood emphasises the Islamic side or the fascist side?

Update: This last point was intended to be tongue-in-cheek.  I was also mistaken and responded too quickly before reading carefully.  Mr. Fumento does make a point of specifically excluding pre-9/11 movies and 9/11-related movies.  Having excluded them, he is right that there are fewer movies that portray jihadis as the villains.  That exclusionary move seems a bit strange, though, since 9/11 is the iconic moment of jihadi terrorism.  Excluding movies related to the most immediately significant jihadi terrorist attack and then complaining about a lack of movies showing jihadi villains are odd moves to make.  If I ruled out Schindler’s List and Life Is Beautiful , I could also make a claim that Hollywood seems to have stopped caring about the Holocaust and no longer makes movies about it.  That wouldn’t make a lot of sense.  

The rest of Frumento’s response strikes me as a little bizarre.  Live Free Or Die Hard, which I happened to see this weekend, is possibly the most effective antiterrorist movie of the last several years.  It feeds off of 24‘s fixation with computer technology and the ability of terrorists to wreak havoc through hacking into networks controlling infrastructure, and includes a 24-style Steven Saunders disgruntled former operative storyline that naturally will heighten the public’s anxiety about the potential sources of terrorism.  It has Willis’ John McClane as an American everyman who nonetheless performs insane acts of derring-do (many of which would be immediately fatal or disabling in reality) out of devotion to his work as a cop and his family.  You couldn’t have put together more of a crowd-pleasing hero with the cause of antiterrorism. 

Jack Bauer naturally strikes people as somewhat inhuman and brutal, because that is what his character is–here John McClane makes antiterrorism into the work of the guy who feels compelled to do the right thing because he happens to be the only guy available.

The movie is very focused on the threat of terrorism, while being very dismissive of government competence.  This lends support to the most alarmist arguments stressing vulnerabilities to attack.  I almost expect someone to criticise the movie for glorifying and supporting the national security state and, per a Dana Stevens review, at least partially endorsing the policies of George Bush. 

Fumento adds this bit of Freudian slippage:

Meanwhile one of the few good guys in the movie, the head of the FBI team that aids our hero John McCain [bold mine-DL], looks decidedly Arabic. 

As much as I’m sure McCain would like to be confused with Bruce Willis–his poll ratings would improve–that’s not the character’s name.  It’s worth noting that the character to which Fumento refers is also obviously powerless, mostly clueless and pretty much useless throughout the film.