“ingrained in the middle eastern mentality”? I’d have a look at my own mentality if I was this comfortable generalizing several hundreds of millions of people like that. It seems like you have disdain for both victim and perpetrator irrespective of which in your mind is which, because they’re middle eastern. Weird.
I’d say that military bases within European countries is the definition of projecting hard power. If 40 000 soldiers in a military base are called ‘soft power’, what’s hard power then? Nuking the city?