Why do they hate us?

Monday night, students had the chance to see a new documentary that examined the widespread resentment of the United States in the Middle East as a reason behind the Sept. 11 attacks.

The film, Why U.S.?, was created by 24 year-old filmmaker and recent University of Missouri graduate, Bill Lindsey. Lindsey traveled around the world to examine the roots of Middle Eastern resentment of US foreign policy and culture and his film has gained prominent fans, including former President Bill Clinton.

In the Middle East, "there is a thin layer of anti-Americanism, but under that is this fascination" with American culture, Lindsey said. The documentary covered issues ranging from the conflict in Israel to religion to the lack of democracy in the Middle East, and tried to examine all the different elements that could have caused an event like Sept. 11.

The decision to start the ambitious project began when Lindsey and producer Cody Shearer met by chance in a Kinko's in Los Angeles on Sept. 11. Since every plane in the country was grounded, Lindsey offered Shearer a ride to Washington, DC.

The pair began interviewing people all across the US during the drive to Washington, and found that most Americans were confused as to why there was so much hatred toward the US. This lingering question sparked Lindsey and Shearer to take the project to a larger scale.

The film is "trying to educate people and start discussion around the country," said Shearer, who also serves as president of the Institute for International Mediation and Conflict Resolution. The film features interviews with professors, journalists, students, and politicians from the US, Europe, and the Middle East.

The documentary includes a broad range of views, such moderate ones from students in Cairo, to extreme ones from a 20 year-old spokesman for Al-mujahideen who had just returned from Al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan.

The film used these interviews to show the psychological rift between the US and the Middle East. "You cannot find a single social group in the Middle East that is for the US," Sarah Lawrence College professor Fawaz Gerges said in the film. Such opinions were backed up with images of rallies in the Middle East where thousands chanted hate slogans against the US.

Americans are responsible for learning about the world and keep abreast of US foreign policy, the film concluded. Conveying that moral was "one of the goals from the beginning," Shearer said when an audience member asked him about the motives behind the film. "I wanted to present some ideas of what Americans can do," he said.

While creating the film, Lindsey and Shearer sought to be as unbiased as possible, though Lindsey said they were not always as successful as they would like to have been. One audience member, an Egyptian diplomat, felt that Lindsey did not always fairly portray the issues impartially.

"The editing of the film, I felt, misled the audience [about Egypt], said Obaida El-dandarawy, a diplomat on leave in order to study at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. The documentary unfairly judged Egyptian democracy without showing an understanding of the culture, El-dandarawy said.

Discussion after the film focused on how the Middle East's opinion of the US should affect the Bush administration's plan for war in Iraq, and whether it is too late for the Middle Eastern public opinion about the US to change. Though Lindsey said he learned a lot about Iraq while traveling in the region, he was not going to try to present a solution. "It's a lot more complex than a lot of people think," Lindsey said.

In fact, Lindsey had wanted to put a greater focus on Iraq, but there was not enough time to cover everything. Often, Lindsey said, he felt that he could have made entire documentaries about individual issues brought up during the film. These issues will remain un-addressed, at least by Lindsey, since he is hoping to work on a feature film after he finishes screening Why U.S.? around the country later this spring.