While I disagree with Eric Robert’s sentiment, attempting to frame an individual actor’s opinions as somehow representative of “Hollywood” seems a bit disingenuous and hyperbolic to me as well.
Reasonable people can certainly disagree with whom or what combination of people are most responsible for the on-going morass of terrible that typically epitomizes The Middle East, (if such a complex, decades long, slow moving freight train of dysfunction can be clearly and credibly laid at the feet of any one or even any one hundred people) but I think all Americans can agree that ISIS is a dangerous terror organization and that they and they alone are directly responsible for the death of James Foley.
At the risk of engaging in the same overgeneralized broad brush, most of the reactions I’ve read from “Hollywood” people are basically just that. They pretty much seem to agree with that sentiment. I.e. It’s horrible. How awful for the family. When do we do as a nation do something about such horrific people?
Blame assignment doesn’t seem to go much further than the scum who murdered Mr. Foley.
As I think Eric Robert’s tweet is clumsily worded, ill-timed, rude, inaccurate, (George W Bush did not kill James Foley, Eric. For God’s sake, get a grip.) and is seeking to politicize that reporter’s death in an ugly fashion, I’m loathe to even attempt to translate it into something less foolish, but here it goes:
I (a little bit) kind of, (sort of) agree with him but only in the most very generalized and very broad terms. To wit, I assume he’s making the assertion that our invasion of Iraq helped to create the conditions that led to the current state of affairs; including the rise of ISIS and ultimately leading to that reporter’s ugly death. In that much at least, if nothing else, I think there’s a bit of a valid point. It still doesn’t make it former President Bush’s sole responsibility, though.
There’s plenty of blame assignment to go around at this point. I took issue with a number of policy decisions The Bush administration made re: Iraq and strongly opposed the initial invasion. Furthermore, I take equal issue with a number of policy decisions of the Obama administration had made in the same arena. I think they may have inadvertently made a bad situation even worse. To say nothing of the colossal, widespread dysfunction, organized graft, and institutionalized ethnic and religious conflicts both in Iraq and all of its neighbors (including the on-going nightmare in Syria) which have helped regional conditions spiral even more out of control. Even talking about “Iraq” seems like a complete misnomer as in many regards it’s becoming a failed state and is actually broken up into several regional pieces which are barely talking to each other at this point.
It’s a bit much for a Tweet.
So, yeah, Eric Roberts is being an idiot.
But he’s not the spokesperson for “Hollywood”. Unless someone is the designated representative of an actual organization, he or she can’t really be said to be speaking for them.
Speaking only for me, I have no idea what we (as a nation) should do at this point. In many regards whenever we become more military involved in that region things have a way of becoming even more horrible in ways that could never have been (but maybe should have been) predicted. There’s also the issue that ISIS may very well want The United States more involved. It could further their strategic aim in many ways and are therefore deliberately attempting to provoke a greater response.
That stated, I’m quickly approaching the point of metaphorically saying, “Screw it, bomb them until we can’t find anything else to bomb”. For people like the ISIS group, there may literally be nothing else they understand. Luckily for us, The United States Navy and Air Force are capable of delivering exactly that kind of dictionary. I'm generally not that bombastic but I (along with, I suspect, most Americans regardless of their political party of choice) have just about had enough of those people.