For those who have not read the book or seen the movie, the country of Rohan–a Germanic or Scandinavian nation of farmers and horse breeders–is under attack by the evil wizard Saruman and his Orcs. As depicted in the movie, there is little difference between Orcs and militant “Muslims,” noting the Orcs’ total contempt not only for human life but also their own kind. During the attack on Helm’s Deep, a Palestinian Orc does an Olympic torch run to set off an explosive charge, thus blowing himself up along with the walls of the fortress. (Most sappers and pioneers lay fuzes so they can get away before the charges go off, but this Orc selected the militant “Islamic” method.)

It would not surprise us, in fact, if the Orcs had not been modeled after Islamofascists. The evil imam wizard Saruman (played excellently by Christopher Lee, who specializes in portraying villains) kicks off his jihad by making a Hitler speech from the top of his minaret tower. He tells his legions of barbaric and savage Islamofascists Uruk-Hai to invade Rohan and kill everybody, including the women and children. Wormtongue, who is supposed to be advisor to the King of Rohan but who is actually Saruman’s collaborator, makes a point of reminding the evil mullah wizard that a convoy of refugees will include defenseless women and children upon whom Saruman can sic his wolf-riding jihadis Orcs.

Prior to the outbreak of open war, however, the Orcs had already been attacking villages in Rohan and doing the usual: killing everybody, looting, and then burning. As depicted in the movie, the Orcs actually set fire to the village before looting, thus destroying everything of value that they might have stolen. This behavior is again characteristic of Palestinians who, upon taking control greenhouses and synagogues in Gaza, promptly destroyed them instead of using them for their own benefit.

The Orcs were able to cross their own borders to terrorize another country’s civilians with relative impunity (sound familiar?) because, although the Rohirrim had a powerful military instrument in the form of their matchless cavalry, their government was unwilling to use it. Wormtongue had been spending most of his time turning King Theoden into a gibbering invalid while assuring him that the massacres of the people for whose safety he was responsible constituted “peace”–much as various Kumbaya-singers in Israel and the United States view daily rocket attacks by Palestinian terrorists and the almost-daily murder of American soldiers in Iraq as “peace.”

Wormtongue even had the King’s nephew exiled for leading attacks against the invading Orcs, because this “warmongering” behavior was obviously provoking them. If one finds this hard to believe, armed Mexican drug dealers were recently allowed to threaten unarmed U.S. National Guard troops inside the borders of the United States itself. Our country doubtlessly contains thousands of Wormtongues who would denounce American soldiers or law enforcement officers who fired on armed invaders, because that is how Wormtongues tend to think.

Finally, the wizard Gandalf (played excellently by Ian McKellan) exposed Wormtongue for the traitor he was, whereupon King Theoden and his men threw him bodily down a stairway and ordered him to leave the kingdom. There are certainly legal and nonviolent ways in which we can express equal revulsion for Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan, Rosie O’Donnell, A Jewish Voice for Peace, and similar worm-tongued counselors and celebrities that are undermining our will to defend ourselves from barbaric enemies and invaders.