Stop the Presses! Teflon Agrees with A Lefty on the War on Terror

Alan Wolfe has a piece up at the NY Times on Dinesh D'Souza's new book.

Here's a worthy snippet:

Dreadful things happened to America on that day [9/11/01], but, truth be told, D'Souza is not all that upset by them. America is fighting two wars simultaneously, he argues, a war against terror abroad and a culture war at home. We should be using the former, less important, one to fight the latter, really crucial, one. The way to do so is to encourage a split between "radical" Muslims like bin Laden, who engage in jihad, and "traditional" Muslims who are conservative in their political views and deeply devout in their religious practices; understanding the radical Muslims, even being sympathetic to some of their complaints, is the best way to win the support of the traditionalists. We should stand with conservative Muslims in protest against the publication of the Danish cartoons that depicted the Prophet Muhammad rather than rallying to the liberal ideal of free speech. We should drop our alliance with decadent Europe and "should openly ally" with "governments that reflect Muslim interests, not ... Israeli interests." And, most important of all, conservative religious believers in America should join forces with conservative religious believers in the Islamic world to combat their common enemy: the cultural left.

The "domestic insurgents" who, in D'Souza's view, constitute the cultural left want "America to be a shining beacon of global depravity, a kind of Gomorrah on a Hill." "I intend to name the enemy at home," D'Souza proclaims, and so he does. Twenty recent members of Congress, including Hillary Rodham Clinton and Ted Kennedy, are on one of his lists, and 17 intellectuals (one dead, one British) are on another, with similar numbers of Hollywood figures, activists, foreign policy experts, cultural leaders and organizations. Some of those he identifies -- Noam Chomsky, Ramsey Clark, Ward Churchill -- might not be surprised to find themselves here. Others -- the sociologist Paul Starr, the historian Sean Wilentz, the clergyman Jim Wallis, the philosopher Martha Nussbaum -- are less obvious candidates for inclusion. (One person, Thomas Frank, is mentioned on two different lists.) All these people might charge D'Souza with "McCarthyism" for supposedly exposing them, but he accepts the challenge. McCarthy, after all, was "largely right."

Lest one think that D'Souza exaggerates the danger the cultural left presents to America, he has an ace in the hole to back him up: Osama bin Laden himself. Bin Laden, it seems, has taken pains to identify his natural allies within the United States and regularly engages in "signaling" them through videotapes in "an effort to establish a broader political alliance." In particular, his fall 2004 tape, generally believed to have helped George W. Bush defeat John F. Kerry, contained a secret message to the cultural left that D'Souza, and D'Souza alone, has decoded. "Whichever state does not encroach upon our security thereby ensures its own," bin Laden declared. Anyone who thinks bin Laden used the term "state" to mean "country" -- common usage in Europe and the Middle East -- is wrong. He was actually telling residents of New York and Massachusetts that if they voted for the Democrats, he would refrain from killing them. D'Souza writes like a lover spurned; despite all his efforts to reach out to bin Laden, the man insists on joining forces with the Satanists.

So let me get this straight in my non-Ivy League-educated little brain: Islamist radicals in a Wahhabist terrorist organization led by a madman who claimed he attacked America for daring to occupy Saudi soil kill 2,977 Americans, and D'Souza blames Hollywood and NPR?

Methinks the 9/11 hijackers had something more relevant in common than a loathing for porn: a religion which glorifies people who ram civilian airliners into civilian buildings while shouting the name of their god.

D'Souza, a Muslim, wants to change the subject.

His thesis does provoke some questions:

1. If porn was the problem, why did Al Qaeda target New York instead of Los Angeles or, even better, Denmark? New York hasn't been sleazy since the 80s.

2. If cultural imperialism was the problem, why didn't they target the French, with longstanding ties to the region and a much more imperious mindset?

3. If liberalism was the problem, why not target decadent Europe, which is far more liberal than the States?

Of course, the larger question is "Why would Americans side with foreign Muslims over their fellow Americans, however misguided their countrymen may be?"

D'Souza has done a very dangerous thing---he has excused his barbaric, murderous coreligionists and condemned his fellow Americans.

I have no problem pointing out the borderline treasonous activities of the Left in this country, but I have a big problem with downplaying the vicious evil of our enemies to do so.

Bill Moyers didn't slit those stewardess' throats.

Noam Chomsky didn't ram an airplane into those Towers.

Leftists didn't kill 2,977 Americans in one day.

Muslims did.

And American Muslims like D'Souza might want to first investigate what prompts them to pooh-pooh such actions on the part of their fellow Muslims before blaming innocent Americans for their own murders.

Alan Wolfe is absolutely right.


Update-

Scott Johnson of Powerline caught a giant whopper of an error on my part. I claimed that Dinesh D'Souza was a Muslim; he is in fact a Catholic:
(http://www.dineshdsouza.com/more/about_more.html)

D'Souza has jumped many hurdles and he has jumped them both far and high, thanks in part to influences that have guided his life. "A believing Catholic but a poorly practicing one," D'Souza said religious faith is vital to achievement. He also believes a supportive family and friends are "indispensable," as is "a belief in one's own potential for good".

This easily-verifiable fact was confirmed in 3 seconds; I didn't take the 3 seconds to look this up despite being surprised by some other commentary on the issue claiming that D'Souza was a Muslim. I've read several of his books and many of his articles and had never before seen a reference to his being a Muslim, yet I presumed it was true. I regret the error, and thank Scott for correcting me.

I think D'Souza's argument is wrong; but the fact that I attributed the impetus behind his argument to a willingness to absolve his (incorrectly-categorized) coreligionists rather confirms how poor a Catholic I am.