In light of Dinesh D’Souza’s recent appearances on The Daily Show and The Colbert Report to promote his book, The Enemy At Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11, it may seem cruel to pile additional abuse on his piece in today’s L.A Times. But given that I’m one of the people who caused the attack on 9/11, you’ve got to admit that it’s just the kind of thing you’d expect from me. (Okay, okay, I don’t want to be accused of being an attention whore; maybe I didn’t cause 9/11, I just transmitted the “go” code to the terrorists from my secret aerie in the ziggurat of the Woolworth Building. And like the words “Tora! Tora! Tora!” that launched the bombing on Pearl Harbor, the 9/11 code phrase will serve as the title of the definitive motion picture treatment of the attacks. Look for The Gaberdine is Crisp!, coming to theaters this fall.
By now I’m sure most people are familiar with D’Souza’s thesis: Radical Islamic theocrats attacked us because of Will and Grace and Girls Gone Wild, and those Bowflex commercials with their toned delts and sweaty torsos, thrusting us into the single defining conflict of this generation, which we must fight to the death by becoming exactly like the people who attacked us in the hope that they’ll get confused and accidentally bomb themselves. Pretty succinct theory, really. But a facility for inadvertant irony isn’t Dinesh’s only contribution to the public debate; he also has a gift for proceeding from false assumptions that is so dazzling that I suggest his next book be titled, How Many Questions Could a Question-Beggar Beg if a Question-Beggar Could Beg Questions?
IN CONSIDERING a funding cutoff for U.S. troops in Iraq, the liberal leadership in Congress runs the risk of making the United States more vulnerable to future attacks, not just in the Middle East but here at home.
Wow, a lie right out of the box. Apparently Dinesh learned his sense of pacing from all those porn movies he watched while researching our degenerate culture, where it’s necessary to jump right into the action lest the viewer hit the Fast Forward button, or flip around to see what else is on Spectravision. Anyway, a show of hands if you’re heard any members of “the liberal leadership in Congress” talk about cutting off funds for U.S. troops in Iraq. Certainly they’ve talked about capping the number of troops at their present level, and John Murtha has said he wants to ‘“fence the funding,” denying the president the resources to escalate the war, instead using the money to take care of the soldiers as we bring them home from Iraq “as soon as we can.”‘ So far only Dennis Kucinich is seriously talking about cutting off all funds and demanding an immediate withdrawl from Iraq, but last I looked, the Democratic leadership has installed a “You Must Be At Least This Tall To Lead Congress” sign at the switchbacks leading to the Speaker’s Chair.
Pundits on the left say that 9/11 was the result of a “blowback” of resistance from the Islamic world against U.S. foreign policy. At first glance, this seems to make no sense.
Exactly. U.S. foreign policy making people mad at us? Whoever heard of THAT?
American colonialism in the Middle East? The U.S. has no history of colonialism there. Washington’s support for unelected dictatorial regimes in the region? The Muslims can’t be outraged about this, because there are no other kinds of regimes in the region.
MUSLIM: Why did you give our unelected, dictatorial regime helicopter gunships and chemical weapon components? They just sprayed our village with VX nerve agent and set my entire family on fire!
U.S.: Well, we would’ve been happy to give the Blackhawks and the nerve gas to an elected, non-dictatorial regime if you’d had one, but those kinds of regimes don’t usually need sophisticated weapons systems to stay in power, and we had to give ‘em to someone. Surely even you, standing in a scorched impact crater with your skin peeling off, has to admit that it would be a wee bit unreasonable to get all outraged at us about this.
U.S. support for Israel and wars against the Muslims? Yes, but the U.S. has frequently fought on the side of the Muslims, as in Afghanistan in the 1980s or in the Persian Gulf War.
Well, except for sending John Rambo and Luke from The Real McCoys, we didn’t exactly fight on the side of the muhajadeen in Afghanistan in the ’80s. But we did give them lots of guns and ammo, which came in very handy after we abandoned the country to lawlessness and warlordism following the Soviets’ withdrawal. But the altruism of our effort in the Persian Gulf War is undeniable, except if you count all those permanent bases in Saudi Arabia that we got out of it.
But in a sense the liberal pundits are right. The U.S. made two gigantic foreign policy blunders in recent decades that did sow the seeds of 9/11. What the liberals haven’t recognized is that these blunders were the direct result of their policies and actions, and were carried out by Democratic presidents — Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.
Also, as Stephen Colbert prodded Dinesh to admit, FDR, since he handed Stalin the keys to Eastern Europe at the Yalta Conference instead of ordering a nuclear strike on Moscow, which would have prevented the Soviet Union from invading Afghanistan forty years later, forcing us to give guns and training to Osama bin Laden.
To understand this, we need a little perspective.
Forced perspective, but still…
Radical Islam became a global force in 1979, when it captured its first major state, Iran. Before that, radical organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood were fighting losing battles to overthrow their local governments. This changed with the success of the Khomeini regime in Iran. The Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was the first Muslim leader to describe the U.S. as the “Great Satan”
…and he’s yet to see a dime in artist royalties for it.
…and to counsel martyrdom and jihad against it. Iran continues to be a model for radical Muslims.
Except for the radical Sunni Muslims who attacked us, since they pretty much hate the Persian Shia. But they’re still willing to do a quick charcoal sketch — under protest — as long as Iran agrees to model nude.
Khomeini’s ascent to power was aided by Carter’s policies. Carter came into office stressing his support for human rights. His advisors told him that he could not consistently support the shah of Iran, who had secret police and was widely accused of violating human rights. The administration began to withdraw its support and finally pulled the rug out from under the shah, forcing him to step down.
Yes, the Shah had “secret police” (Dinish makes it sound so nice, like the Shah had an imaginary friend or something) and was “widely accused of violating human rights.” But consider the source: the accusations against the Shah came almost entirely from people he’d had tortured, so they clearly had an axe to grind. But this does pose a question: if a tyrant is in danger of being overthrown by his own people the instant we stop propping him up, exactly how long can we keep him in power before the populace is legitimately allowed to get irked at us? 20 years? 30? In Dinesh’s ideal world, would there be a Pahlavi on the Peacock Throne and a SAVAK agent at every keyhole in Teheran today?
Clinton’s policies also helped to provoke 9/11. After the Cold War, leading Islamic radicals returned to their home countries. Bin Laden left Afghanistan and went back to Saudi Arabia; Ayman Zawahiri returned to Egypt. They focused on fighting their own rulers — what they termed the “near enemy” — in order to establish states under Islamic law. But in the mid- to late 1990s, these radicals shifted strategy. They decided to stop fighting the near enemy and to attack the “far enemy,” the U.S.
The world’s sole superpower would seem to be much more formidable than local Muslim rulers such as Hosni Mubarak in Egypt or the Saudi royal family. Bin Laden argued, however, that the far enemy was actually weaker and more vulnerable. He was confident that when kicked in their vital organs, Americans would pack up and run. Just like in Vietnam. Just like in Mogadishu.
Just like in Beirut in 1983, when President Ronald Reagan (I don’t have his biographical information handy, but I’m guessing he must have been a Democrat) pulled out of Lebanon, a decision that prompted Osama bin Laden to declaim: “Where was this false courage of yours when the explosion in Beirut took place in 1983? You were turned into scattered pits and pieces at that time; 241 mainly Marine soldiers were killed.”
Bin Laden saw his theory of American weakness vindicated during the Clinton era. In 1993, Islamic radicals bombed the World Trade Center. The Clinton administration did little.
Except catch the guys who did it and put them in jail.
In 1996, Muslim terrorists attacked the Khobar Towers facility on a U.S. base in Saudi Arabia. No response.
Well, there was an investigation, but it was stymied by the unelected, dictatorial regime in Saudi Arabia. Thank goodness they’re on our side.
In 1998, Al Qaeda bombed two U.S. embassies in Africa. Clinton responded with a few perfunctory strikes in Sudan and Afghanistan.
And was promptly accused of “Wagging the Dog” by Republicans, which didn’t really help advance of the cause of counter-terrorism, but was preferable to stupidly appropriating the title of some other movie released in 1997; Tom Delay might, for instance, have criticized the President for cynically “Jungle 2 Jungling” or for committing a blatant act of ”Air Bud.”
These did no real harm to Al Qaeda and only strengthened the perception of American ineptitude. In 2000, Islamic radicals bombed the U.S. destroyer Cole. Again, the Clinton team failed to act.
And it happened on October 12, almost a month before the election! As any moron knows, THAT’S the time you start a war.
Still, the 2001 attacks might have been averted had the Clinton administration launched an effective strike against Bin Laden in the years leading up to them. Clinton has said he made every effort to get Bin Laden during his second term. Yet former CIA agent Michael Scheuer estimates that there were about 10 chances to capture or kill Bin Laden during this period and that the Clinton people failed to capitalize on any of them.
Michael Scheuer also said this: “I think Iraq is finished. We’ll just find a way to get out. I frankly don’t think we ever intended to win there. We certainly didn’t send enough troops to close borders, to control the country. [Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld was obsessed, apparently with his new, lighter, faster military. The inflow of fighters is growing. The pace of the insurgency, both there and in Afghanistan, is increasing. I don’t hold much of a brief for Sen. John McCain, but he’s right, in an unpalatable way: Unless we greatly increase the number of troops we have in Iraq, we’re going to have to leave. I think the question is how do we leave? Do we leave with some dignity, or do we leave by flying off the top of the embassy as we did in Saigon?” So I guess he knows what he’s talking about.
Two lessons can be drawn from these sorry episodes. The first one, derived from Carter’s actions, is: In getting rid of the bad regime, make sure that you don’t get a worse one. This happened in Iran and could happen again, in Iraq, if leading Democrats in Congress have their way.
To quote the Hoosier Sage, Doghouse Riley: Boy, That’s A Hell Of A Mess We Left In Your Yard There. Here’s How We Think You Should Clean It up.
The second lesson, derived from Clinton’s inaction, is that the perception of weakness emboldens our enemies. If the Muslim insurgents and terrorists believe that the U.S. is divided and squeamish about winning the war on terror, they are likely to escalate their attacks on Americans abroad and at home. In that case, 9/11 will be only the beginning.
But if we stick it out and continue to dump blood and treasure into an unwinnable, inescapable quagmire, our perception of victory is assured. So the question is simple: do we fool our enemies and lose, or do we fool ourselves and win?