In 2006, the conservative National Review released their list of the top 50 "Conservative Rock Songs," with "Rock the Casbah" at #20, noting its frequent requests during the Iraq War. "Rock the Casbah" also was one of the songs deemed inappropriate by Clear Channel following the September 11, 2001 attacks.
In one of the campfire scenes late in the 2007 documentary Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten, a Granada friend states that Strummer wept when he heard that the phrase "Rock the Casbah" was written on an American bomb that was to be detonated on Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War. Cultural reviewer and political analyst Charlie Pierce commented that "the notion of the Clash as spokesfolk for adventurism in the Middle East might have been enough to bring Joe Strummer back from the dead."