On the offensive

Hollywood and Washington have a great deal in common. There are many superficial similarities between the two cities - scandals, egos, a fondness for expensive special effects - but they are united by something more fundamental. They are cities that exist solely to sell the world a dream.

The dream, of course, is America. As dreams go, it's an enormously beguiling one, which is why the world buys what Hollywood and Washington sell. The dream is of a world where the Good Guys win. The Good Guys are the ones struggling for Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. If the United States of America is the only nation ever to have been founded with a happy ending written into its legislative fabric, it's hardly surprising, given that its revolutionary beginnings amounted to a fairly typical plucky-underdogs-overcoming-dastardly-fiends matinee plot.

The problem with Good Guys is that they're of little use if there are no Bad Guys. If there were no Bad Guys, both Hollywood and Washington would be in trouble - they would become bored and listless, and the public might start wondering what they were paying them for. For most of this century, neither city has had to look too hard for its villains. In proper wars with Germany and Japan, and a Cold War with the Soviet Union, the United States has been able to portray itself credibly as the Good Guys, struggling with evils that were implacable, sinister, and delightfully easy to stereotype on camera: cruel Huns, bespectacled Nips and hatchet-faced Communist ideologues.

In these post-Cold War years, however, finding someone to wear the black hat has been a problem for both Washington and Hollywood. Neither city hates the Germans any more, both are owned by the Japanese, and to pick on the Russians at this point would be to invite accusations of gratuitous cruelty. Hence the recent spate of films revolving around extraterrestrial threats, be they big-eyed little green men or rogue asteroids. Hence, also, the other recent spate of films demonising, somewhat desperately, people who used to be Soviets, or sort of Soviets, at least.

In The Peacemaker, New York was threatened by a demented, yet strangely poetic, Bosnian Serb nationalist with a nuclear weapon in his rucksack (given that World War One was started by a demented, yet strangely poetic, Bosnian Serb nationalist with a pistol up his jacket, it rang true enough). In Air Force One, the President's aircraft was hijacked by terrorists from Kazakhstan.

In GoldenEye, James Bond took on Russians who weren't Communists any more but were bad in other ways (although, in fairness, 007 showed more imagination in Tomorrow Never Dies, delivering the world from a megalomaniac media baron based - almost actionably - on Rupert Murdoch).

This is where Washington and Hollywood have had one of their rare diversions. Washington decided almost 10 years ago who the new global bogeyman was - Islam - and has pursued it with a positively crusading zeal. In 1997 alone, Washington despatched tons of wire-guided firepower at Sudan, Afghanistan and Iraq on highly dubious pretexts, all the while allowing a Muslim population in Europe - the people of Kosovo - to be slaughtered at will by the Serbian maniac Milosevic. It has taken Hollywood a long time to catch up. James Cameron's True Lies came up with the all-purpose dark-eyed nutters Crimson Jihad; now we have Edward Zwick's faintly entertaining, almost intelligent, nearly provocative new thriller The Siege, which also gives the Away dressing room to Mohammed and his mates.

The advance press on The Siege was that it was anti-Islam and anti-Arab; that short of drafting Salman Rushdie in to edit the script, its makers could scarcely have done more to offend the Islamic world. The truth is that The Siege is about as anti-Islamic as The Satanic Verses: which is to say that it isn't in the slightest, but will be described as such by people who haven't seen it. The Siege, in fact, up until the d*nouement, is anti-American almost to the point of treason.

The Siege asks us to consider the idea of New York City, brought to a standstill by a bombing campaign by Islamic terrorists, placed under martial law. British cinemagoers with memories of ignoring IRA Christmas campaigns will enjoy a scornful hoot at the idea of New York's population being too scared to venture outside after two bombs in a week, but the premise is notionally an interesting one - how justifiable is it to restrict basic liberties in the short term in order to secure them in the long term? The US Army, commanded by Bruce Willis, takes to the streets. They pester, incarcerate, torture and even murder Brooklyn's Arab population - who are portrayed as models of relative principle and rectitude. While this is going on, the FBI and CIA squabble amongst themselves - the former depicted as well-meaning buffoons, the latter as the devious cynics who taught the terrorists how to make bombs in the first place.

The Siege falls short of its ambition thanks largely to Willis's hammery and an inevitable descent into predictability. It also, in reassuring the audience that The System Works, fails to ram home hard enough the point that, since the end of the Cold War, Washington is no longer simply choosing the villains - Washington is actually making them. The intelligence community call the phenomenon "blowback" - what happens when someone unsavoury whom you equipped, instructed or installed on the principle that the enemy of an enemy is a friend, serves their transient purpose and then turns the weapons and expertise back on to you. Saddam Hussein - armed by the West to keep Iran on its toes during the eighties - is only the most famous example. Look hard enough at any Islamic terrorist organisation, from Hezbollah in Lebanon, to the PKK in Turkey, to Hamas in the Gaza Strip, to sundry ragbag groups in Chechnya, Tajikistan and Algeria, and you will find Mujahedin - CIA-trained veterans of Afghanistan's war with the USSR. The bombers of the World Trade Centre did not learn everything they know from books.

While Washington continues to reap what it has sown, and continues to deal with the problem by bombing it - a solution analogous to trying to extinguish a fire with a flame-thrower - it'll be interesting to find out whether Hollywood wants to join the jihad, or whether The Siege is a one-off. It is, after all, a sensitive area, which is why The Siege is at such pains to respect the views and cultures of all involved - except those of the United States military. It is depressing to contemplate that Washington and Hollywood may finally diverge in their choice of favoured villain because it's less politically correct to make films about Muslims than it is to launch Cruise missiles at them.