Great element of truth in that statement. The dinner party chatter described is reminiscent of recounts of the British upper/ruling class discussing Hitler at their dinner parties. Their assumptions were catastrophically wrong, and conclusions as shallow as their character.
That's the problem with anything Hollywood attempts to get serious about, it comes out as shallow. Because it is.
I have a freind who, although I do not think that he is an extreme leftist by native inclination, has nevertheless bought into the whole Noam Chomskyite blame-America-for-everything nonesense. (He's Muslim, but of a moderate, Sufi bent. I think the radicalism has more to do with the non-Muslim American college students he hangs out with, and his involvement with yet more lefties through Amnesty International.)
When I asked this guy, during a discussion of Iraq, whether he didn't at least appreciate, leaving aside means, the fact of what had been accomplished in the liberation of Afghanistan, he totally shocked me by claiming that America had made things worse there. But the only good thing he could say about the Taliban was they had "brought stability". I didn't have the heart to tell him that this is exactly what people said (and truthfully) about HITLER.