Having just seen previews of the documentary "Obsession", I'm afraid that the misperceptions of this film can only make us more vulnerable. The driving message of this documentary is that we are fighting a religious war against an enemy that seeks either our conversion or death.

This documentary continues a conservative-liberal debate about the nature of the War On Terror on the side of conservatism. Many conservatives view the War On Terror as a religious war or a clash between civilizations. Many liberals, fearing a backlash against Muslims, are campaigning to persuade people that the War On Terror is a nationalistic battle. Both sides, in this debate, can legitimately cite evidence supporting their view.

On the conservative side, there is no doubt that our enemy calls on a religion for support. That religion is a militant form of Islam to which most Muslims do not adhere. In addition, there are more than a few American conservative Christians who feel targeted by these Islamic militants. Certainly, there are more than enough quotes made by Islamic terrorists documented in Obsession that can easily confirm this perception. So does this make the War On Terror a religious war?

But consider then the following. First, there is the following compilation of grievances made by Osama Bin Laden or his associates about America. Sources for this list are Jason Burke's book "Al-Qaeda: Casting A Shaddow Of Terror" and Robert Fisk's "The Great War For Civilisation: The ConQuest Of The Middle East." This list includes: support for Israel's brutal treatment and even slaughter of the Palestinians and Lebanese, the sanctions on Iraq(which is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis), the use of atomic weapons in WWII(the use of nuclear weapons against the Japanese was also opposed by Eisenhower), our environmental record, our military presence in Saudi Arabia, and our support for a Saudi government that benefits the royal family at the expense of its citizens. If our conflict today has a deep religious bend because our opponent seeks a religious remedy, we must realize that its beginning has strong secular roots. The conjunction of our war's current status and its beginnings ensure that we can paint this war as neither a purely nationalist battle nor a strict religious clash.

What also adds to the mixed nature of our conflict is the following: the strong support of American Christian Zionists for Israel and their fear that Islamic militants are targeting both them and their culture, the historic attacks by the West on secular Middle East nationalism from England's and France's colonial occupation of the Middle East in the early 20th century to our overthrow of Iran's parlimentary government in 1953 to our invasion of Iraq in 2003, and Israel's early support for Hamas while it attacked a then secular Palestinian leadership.
       
But perhaps the best way to describe the War On Terror is to describe it neither in terms of nationalism nor religion. While watching the documentary "Obsession" and its description of the radical nature of our enemy, it became quickly apparent that some of what the film was saying about "Radical Islam" could have also been said about us. Does this form of Islam want to use force to make others conform to their image? Are we not trying to bring "democracy" to the Middle East at the point of high tech weapons? We must place the word democracy in quotes here because we are only supporting democracies that do what we say--see Venezuela, Nicaragua, and the Palestinian election of Hamas. We must note with the Palestinian selection of Hamas that while Israel continued to attack the occupied territories, Hamas observed an over year-long moratorium against attacking Israel and offered to recognize Israel if they returned to its '67 border.
 
And do not both sides say that you are either with us or with the enemy? So perhaps the best to describe the War On Terror is not as a nationalistic war or a religious war, but as a partisan war. Both sides use terrorism. The use of terrorism by the radical Islamic terrorists is obvious. But the standards we use to determine what is terrorism when evaluating our enemies are absent when it comes to judging the actions of the West. Israel's attack on the infrastructure and civilians of both Lebanon and the Gaza Strip as well as our own unprovoked invasion and destruction of Iraq point to Western terrorism. We might feel uncomfortable with such a designation but terrorism is in the eye of the recipient, not the aggressor. 

So the war is not purely a religious war. In fact, the war did not start as a religious war. So treating the War On Terror as a religious war can only be counterproductive and thus hurt our chances to win.