Dinesh D'Souza has released a new book entitled "The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and its Responsibility for 9/11." Yes, apparently it is the "cultural left" that created Islamist terrorism, not, for instance (1) dominant notions of Realpolitick wherein, say, Afghani Mujahadeen are armed and trained by President Reagan and the C.I.A. to resist the Soviets, or (2) European Imperialism that cut up the region in an often arbitrary, if not sometimes insidious fashion.
No, the Left caused 9/11. From Michiko Kakutani's evisceration of D'Souza in the NY Times:
Mr. D’Souza’s central thesis is an absurd one, constructed around two clashing arguments: 1) that the American left is allied to the Islamic radical movement to undermine the Bush White House and American foreign policy; and 2) that “the left is the primary reason for Islamic anti-Americanism as well as the anti-Americanism of other traditional cultures around the world” because “liberals defend and promote values that are controversial in America and deeply revolting to people in traditional societies, especially in the Muslim world.”Indeed, the "Cultural Left's" beliefs of the universality of human rights, gender equality, etc., are what caused 9/11, because we project these beliefs upon others in, say, the marketplace of Ideas, instead of the through the barrel of a gun. Another gem from Kakutani:
To flesh out his theories, Mr. D’Souza tosses out lots of assertions based on false information, partial truths and unrepresentative anecdotes. For instance, he repeatedly asserts that Osama bin Laden hates America because “the cultural left has fostered a decadent American culture,” not because of United States foreign policy. He says Muslims couldn’t possibly have seen a threat to Islam in the presence of United States troops in Saudi Arabia, because the American base there “is more than five hundred miles from Islam’s holy sites”; nor could they be driven to suicide attacks by the Israeli-Palestinian situation because Israel is but “a small irritant within the vast expanse of Islamic territory.”Talk about a state of denial. D'Souza is so blinded by ideology that he would rather blame the American Left for 9/11 than admit that an imperialist foreign policy is what largely contributed to it (but was not the sole cause) in the first place. Thus our championing of human rights causes ire in the Islamic world, not Israel/Palestine, or Abu Ghraib. Oh, and speaking of Abu Ghraib:
He writes that American prisons at Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib “are comparable to the accommodations in midlevel Middle Eastern hotels” in terms of cleanliness, food and amenities, and argues that abuse at Abu Ghraib did not reflect a disregard for human rights, but rather “the sexual immodesty of liberal America.” (“Lynndie England and Charles Graner were two wretched individuals from red America who were trying to act out the fantasies of blue America.”)
It makes one wonder who's really acting out their fantasies. Oh, and as an aside--D'Souza is a visiting scholar at Stanford University. Conservative scholarship should be proud.
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