Richard Stengel is right to say the American film industry is one of our largest exports. But it’s ridiculous that he does not admit, or perhaps does not understand, that one of the things Islamic holy warriors fight against is precisely the American film industry and the secular humanistic values it stands for. In “a battle of competing narratives” between the United States and ISIS, Hollywood is not an asset but a liability. It represents everything the jihadists despise.

And it’s lousy at propaganda. Has been since Top Gun (Fire Birds was okay when I was 9). The movies Hollywood has made that reference the war on terror have been exercises in ambiguity, nuance, and moral complexity, ballads to the fallen, meditations on our defeats. Some of those movies are quite good: Blackhawk Down, Zero Dark Thirty, Lone Survivor, 13 Hours. But even the worthy titles fail as “counter narrative.” Successful propaganda is not elegiac. It is not apologetic. It is assertive. Triumphal.

Consider how ISIS does it. The terrorists have mastered a sort of pornography, the ideological snuff film that establishes the Caliphate as a sweeping and expanding army of believers. ISIS not only says it represents Islam. It says it represents the true and resurgent Islam that is following a master plan to conquer the world. Join the army now, the videos and magazines and tweets proclaim, to capture the élan of victory, to enjoy the spoils of war, the status of the elect.