by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
National Review Online<\/em><\/p>\n D<\/span>inesh D\u2019Souza now weighs in against his numerous conservative critics in a series entitled \u201cThe Closing of the Conservative Mind.\u201d The result is again suicidal, for his latest apology only confirms the nonsensical arguments found in\u00a0The Enemy at Home<\/i>.<\/p>\n 1. D\u2019Souza writes: \u201cOne might expect the Right to be open to a candid evaluation of what\u2019s going wrong and how it might be fixed.\u201d<\/p>\n In fact, that is what the surge, the appointment of Gen. Petraeus, and changes at the Pentagon are all about. Such adjustments are all preferable to D\u2019Souza\u2019s remedy of demonizing, in the middle of a war, millions of Americans at home in order to win approval from conservative Muslims abroad who supposedly, with justification, hate the popular culture of the United States to the point of partially supporting those who wish to destroy this country.<\/p>\n At\u00a0National Review<\/i>\u00a0alone, wide-ranging disagreements arise over the war, from support for the current democratization of the Middle East to the \u201cmore rubble, less trouble\u201d school of thought to the \u201cwin now, or get out\u201d chorus. D\u2019Souza knows that at the Hoover Institution there are at least four or five different positions voiced regarding Iraq and the larger war.<\/p>\n True, it is the singular achievement of D\u2019Souza that his bizarre writ has for a moment earned universal condemnation from those who can agree on little else. But that rare consensus represents not a \u201cclosing of the conservative mind\u201d so much as it reflects the moral vileness of much of what D\u2019Souza writes. And pathetically, the more frequently conservative magazines, media, and institutions offer D\u2019Souza a megaphone, the more apt he is to play the wounded fawn.<\/p>\n 2. D\u2019Souza writes: \u201cAnd yet these pundits on the Right are doing their best to cover up the Left\u2019s role in 9\/11.\u201d<\/p>\n What does this conspiratorial charge of \u201ccover up\u201d mean exactly? That many of us continue to believe that al Qaeda terrorists blew up innocent Americans for a variety of perceived grievances rather than an understandable Muslim unhappiness with Britney Spears and\u00a0Brokeback Mountain<\/i>? But Al Qaeda did not attack New York and Washington because those on the Left, such as Bill Moyers, Robert Reich, or Sharon Stone (to quote from D\u2019Souza\u2019s own list of the guilty), encouraged or allowed the terrorists to commit mayhem.<\/p>\n No, they struck from two broader causes, apparent for much of the 1980s and 1990s. First, there was a bipartisan appeasement that meant both Republican and Democratic administrations did not reply forcibly to a series of terrorist attacks, from the 1983 Marine barracks murdering in Lebanon to the 2000 ramming of the\u00a0USS Cole<\/i>. That forbearance sent a message to bin Laden that there would likely be few, if any, real consequences, should he escalate his attacks.<\/p>\n Second, the terrorists, in their own words, were furious not at genuine \u201cdecadence\u201d (many had no problem satisfying their own appetites while residing in the West plotting its destruction), but at a ubiquitous Western-inspired modernity itself \u2014 the result of which was that a traditional tribal society in the Middle East was being bypassed, socially, politically, and economically, not just by the West, but also by Asia, South America, and parts of Africa.<\/p>\n Pace<\/i>\u00a0D\u2019Souza, conservative Islamic unease with everything from the transparent charging of interest to a meritocracy that trumps gender, religion, and tribe does have economic consequences, and puts traditional Muslim culture at a decided disadvantage in an increasingly cut-throat globalized marketplace.<\/p>\n With instant worldwide communications, for the first time hundreds of millions in the Middle East became cognizant that, despite religious zeal, business as usual could not reclaim lost stature. In response, few advocated difficult reform, but instead thought that the easy blaming of America or Israel might at least offer the psychological relief of \u201cthey did it to us.\u201d<\/p>\n Facts, then, meant little: not the billions of dollars in American aid sent to Amman, Cairo, or the West Bank; not the life-saving importation of Western medicines, expertise, or engineering; not the windfall profits from high-priced oil; not the generous American acceptance of tens of thousands of Muslim immigrants; not the salvation provided by the U.S. military or American assistance for millions facing annihilation, conquest, or starvation in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Indonesia, Kosovo, Kuwait, or Somalia.<\/p>\n To the extent that al Qaeda provided \u201ctraditional Muslims\u201d with the psychological satisfaction of seeing the superpower take a hit without their having to suffer any real material consequences themselves, many of these \u201ctraditional Muslims,\u201d who must live daily with the humiliating wages of autocracy and statism, seldom minded too much if the radicals now and then \u201cevened the score.\u201d<\/p>\n Again, the Left did not cause all this. The supposed \u201cdecadence\u201d of our popular culture is simply one of dozens of radical Islam\u2019s perceived grievances, and is itself not just a product of social liberality, but also of the affluence created by consumer capitalism. Nor do conservatives think we are in a war with all Muslims. All these sensationalist charges are merely the tropes by which D\u2019Souza seeks to earn transient attention.<\/p>\n 3. D\u2019Souza writes:<\/p>\n Terrorism is defined as an attack on innocent civilians. Given that bin Laden declared war on America in 1996, al Qaeda\u2019s assault on an American warship is not terrorism in the classic sense. This was an attack on a military target, akin to the Japanese kamikaze attacks on American ships during World War II.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Aside from the reasons why D\u2019Souza might wish to redefine the attack against the\u00a0USS Cole<\/i>\u00a0by calling the berthed ship a legitimate military target, his comparison to the Japanese World War II attack on American ships is as crackpot as it is obscene. Terrorism is usually\u00a0not<\/i>\u00a0qualified as an attack solely on civilians. And because a terrorist says he is in a war does not mean he is immune from a charge of terrorism.<\/p>\n In fact, bin Laden has never made any real distinction between civilians and those in uniform. His only requisite was that his targets should be unaware of his immediate deadly intention and thus unable to ward off his attacks, which were aimed at obtaining political objectives through murder and violence.<\/p>\n Long before 9\/11, bin Laden\u2019s cadres murdered civilians in 1993 at the World Trade Center, and in 1998 blew up those in our East African embassies. We were not in a war with Muslims in Yemen where the\u00a0Cole<\/i>\u00a0was docked there on a routine refueling mission in Aden. It was not a military target, much less a participant in a recognized conflict akin to the effort to fend off kamikaze attacks from our declared enemy imperial Japan.<\/p>\n The\u00a0Cole<\/i>\u00a0bombers were not uniformed soldiers in a shooting war trying to ram war craft into an enemy ship firing back to stop them. Instead, the al Qaeda suicide bombers Ibrahim al-Thawr and Abdullah al-Misawa, in civilian clothes, took advantage of the U.S. Navy\u2019s peacetime rules of engagement in a neutral port, knowing that they could approach a peaceful ship with near impunity under the guise of a friendly craft. That alone allowed them to carry off their cowardly terrorist attack and murder 17 Americans as they lined up for lunch in the galley.<\/p>\n In this regard, remember the constant qualifiers in D\u2019Souza\u2019s book such as \u201cYes,\u201d \u201cAlthough,\u201d \u201cBut\u201d and \u201cI am not objecting to,\u201d as in the following: \u201cAlthough 9\/11 is routinely described as a terrorist attack, can anyone seriously maintain that the Pentagon was not a military target?\u201d<\/p>\n Or: \u201cSo I am not objecting to the characterization of 9\/11 as terrorism.\u201d<\/p>\n Or: \u201cYes, there were civilians on the planes but the purpose of hijacking planes was not to kill civilians on board but to use the winged juggernauts as flaming projectiles to destroy the intended symbolic targets.\u201d<\/p>\n That list of exculpation could be expanded, but what we see in these asides is an insidious effort somehow to downplay the savagery of al Qaeda\u2019s 9\/11 attacks \u2014 as if they were not really aimed at butchering innocents in airliners, ordinary people at work, and civilian and military officials in a peacetime Pentagon, but rather legitimate collective cries of the heart from conservative Muslims forced to watch one too many Sean Penn movies or read one too many novels of the \u201cinsurgent\u201d Kurt Vonnegut.<\/p>\n 4. D\u2019Souza writes: \u201cContrary to Hanson I am not blaming \u2018millions of Americans,\u2019 but rather am faulting particular liberal policies and actions taken by named individuals in power.\u201d<\/p>\n Of course, he is. After all, millions of Americans support those policies of his \u201cnamed individuals\u201d \u2014 policies that may be wrongheaded, yet are hardly designed to lose the war against bin Laden as D\u2019Souza alleges \u2014 and without any proof whatsoever. And I mean that literally when D\u2019Souza, in his most reprehensible moment among many, identifies prominent Americans who, he says, are \u201cdomestic insurgents\u201d (e.g., U.S. Senators Barbara Boxer, Hillary Clinton, Carl Levin, Patrick Leahy, Jack Reed, etc.) and \u201cwant bin Laden to win.\u201d<\/p>\n When, for example, his treason list includes Salman Rushdie \u2014 for years in hiding as the target of a lethal fatwa \u2014 as one of the \u201cdomestic (sic) insurgents,\u201d one gets a good indication of the level of D\u2019Souza\u2019s thinking. Note that he keeps reiterating that he is accusing the Left of wanting us to lose in Iraq, without mentioning that his charge is in fact far broader, in stating that the likes of the late Molly Ivins, Tony Judt, or Garry Wills \u201cwant bin Laden to win.\u201d<\/p>\n In this regard, he sums up:<\/p>\n We must give up on leftists in America and Europe who will never join our side and instead find common cause with the traditional Muslims who share many of our values and can actually help us defeat radical Islam.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n What does \u201cgive up on\u201d really mean? I am no big fan of a Russ Feingold or a Howard Dean, but as fellow Americans I find more resonance with them than with conservative Muslims abroad who, at least currently, do not approve of religious tolerance, or an equality of women, or freedom of speech and expression. Personally in this war I prefer to make \u201ccommon cause\u201d with the atheist leftist Christopher Hitchens or Al Gore\u2019s former running mate, Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Lieberman, or a liberal Tom Lantos (also named as a \u201cdomestic insurgent\u201d on the D\u2019Souza list) than with someone abroad who embraces sharia law.<\/p>\n And in a practical sense, who and what are the \u201ctraditional Muslims\u201d with whom we are to \u201cfind common cause\u201d? Shiites in Iran? Which Algerian faction? The Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo? Saudi clerics, or Kuwaiti women who wish to drive, or Tunisian students who want a secular education? For much of the twentieth century, various messianic figures in the Arab Street have envisioned a pan-Arabic nation, a unified Baathist state, or an all-Islamic Middle East. All have failed because there are centuries-old tribal, religious, and political differences in the Middle East that help to explain why U.S. foreign policy has never quite seen the region as a unified whole \u2014 and why today a Muslim Jordan allies itself with the U.S. in common worry over Iran, or why an oil-rich, but under-populated and jittery, Libya, in fear of and contemptuous of surrounding Muslim nations, reaches out to the West, or why a secularized Lebanon or divided Iraq has no real solidarity with its Muslim neighbors.<\/p>\n Anytime those in and out of the Middle East \u2014 whether the old Soviet Union, Gamel Nasser, or the current Arab League \u2014 called for generic political allegiances of the sort D\u2019Souza advocates, apparent Muslim solidarity proved chimerical.<\/p>\n And what makes D\u2019Souza think that a young woman at a university in Kuwait, or a teacher in Morocco, necessarily would appreciate American conservatives allying themselves with religiously conservative Muslims in their midst? It escapes him entirely that a \u201cliberal\u201d Middle Easterner, not a conservative or \u201ctraditional\u201d Muslim, might better be our natural ally in this war of values.<\/p>\n In this regard, here is a small excerpt of what a Muslim woman recently wrote to me about my earlier hostile review of D\u2019Souza\u2019s\u00a0The Enemy at Home<\/i>.<\/p>\n What threatens patriarchal Muslim communities are not the excesses of Western societies but its very norms. Individualism and the relatively equal position of women manifest themselves in the opportunities females have to pursue education and economic independence. And these principles of individual freedom and equality, even Mr. D’Souza will agree, are neither Right nor Left, but simply American. There is no way that Muslim women, in great numbers, can be granted similar opportunities without it eventually shaking their societies at their very foundations.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n 5. D\u2019Souza writes: \u201cHanson offers no explanation, merely proclaiming al Qaeda\u2019s ideology \u2018rambling\u2019 and \u2018incoherent.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Again, this claim is false. This is what I actually wrote:<\/p>\n Bin Laden at times whined about the American failure to sign the Kyoto treaty on global climate, white racism, the bombing of Hiroshima, even improper campaign donations. If we took these terrorist rants as seriously as D’Souza does, then al Qaeda might seem to be a radical leftist organization furious at the supposed sins of a conservative United States.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n But why\u00a0inter alia<\/i>\u00a0would al Qaeda cite Kyoto, white racism, the way we finance our elections, and Hiroshima among its myriad shifting reasons to hate America if, as D\u2019Souza argues, these radicals instead reflect a logical Islamic anger at liberal excess in the United States?<\/p>\n Soon we might read of a leftist counterpart to D\u2019Souza, blaming the Right for 9\/11 on grounds of the terrorists\u2019 silly whines over our lack of environmentalism, past war crimes, racial prejudice, and big-money politics that have understandably offended bin Laden to the point of homicidal fury.<\/p>\n 6. D\u2019Souza writes:<\/p>\n Notice how Hanson compares the excesses of the cultural Left with those of radical Islam, while the real issue is whether traditional Muslims all believe in gender segregation, burkas, honor killings, and religious intolerance.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n But that comparison is precisely the point: our supposedly radical Left is not blowing up radical Muslims on the basis of their Islamic fundamentalist hatred of emancipated women or homosexuals, in the manner radical Muslims, according to D\u2019Souza, understandably wish to do to us. The \u201creal issue\u201d is relative tolerance and freedom of expression among our respective \u201ctraditional\u201d populations. In the West, a homosexual couple in the United States would notipso facto<\/i>\u00a0bother those next door in a mosque; in much of the Arab Muslim world those in the mosque would make life very difficult for that couple.<\/p>\n In that regard, well aside from the threat of Islamists, I also suggest that D\u2019Souza\u2019s life would not be worth much should he try to proselytize Christianity in Saudi Arabia, openly date a single unmarried woman in Yemen, give a favorable public lecture on agnosticism, apostasy, or atheism in Tehran, or defend Israel publicly on a West Bank street-corner.<\/p>\n 7. D\u2019Souza writes:<\/p>\n Yet right-wing pundits keep writing their articles, citing each other, and whipping themselves up into a frenzy, and when things go badly they blame Bush or simply refuse to face up to the limits of their approach. Now they are mighty upset that I\u2019ve come along and shown the bankruptcy of their understanding and have proposed a new way of looking at the problem.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I don\u2019t recall \u201cblaming Bush\u201d \u2014 far from it.<\/p>\n What I do know is that many of us have been attacked continuously for supporting the president\u2019s efforts to introduce democracy to the Arab world, based on the belief that it is not incompatible with Islam.<\/p>\n What D\u2019Souza has done in sloppy fashion (e.g., \u201cIslamophobes\u201d) is to conflate all his critics into a monolithic notion of \u201cright-wing\u201d pundits, which results in his lecturing those who support democratic change in the Arab world that they should support democratic change in the Arab world.<\/p>\n In the end, despite constant qualification, backstepping, and disclaimers, D\u2019Souza\u2019s call for a new pan-conservative American-Islamic alliance will convince few Americans in the middle of this war to \u201cgive up on\u201d millions of \u201cleftists\u201d in our own country in order to join millions of Muslims of the Middle East in a \u201cnew configuration of forces\u201d \u2014 whatever that scary phrase means.<\/p>\n \u00a92007 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Dinesh D\u2019Souza now weighs in against his numerous conservative critics in a series entitled \u201cThe Closing of the Conservative Mind.\u201d The result is again suicidal, for his latest apology only confirms the nonsensical arguments found in\u00a0The Enemy at Home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[760],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-Xb","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3692,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/america-the-blameworthy\/","url_meta":{"origin":3669,"position":0},"title":"America the Blameworthy","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 13, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Dinesh D'Souza Takes Place among the Serial Blame Artists by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services After 9\/11, many leftists cited American faults that supposedly accounted for Osama bin Laden's savage attack. The late Susan Sontag, for example, justified the terrorists' suicide bombing: \"Where is the acknowledgment that this was\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "February 2007"","block_context":{"text":"February 2007","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2007\/february-2007\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7114,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/following-the-trail-nixon-blazed\/","url_meta":{"origin":3669,"position":1},"title":"Following the Trail Nixon Blazed","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 18, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Obama shows the same Orwellian disregard for the Constitution. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online\u00a0 What would a president do if he were furious over criticism, or felt that his noble aims justified most means of attaining them? Answer that by comparing the behavior of Richard Nixon to that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Punditry"","block_context":{"text":"Punditry","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/punditry\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":149,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-orientalism-of-barack-obama\/","url_meta":{"origin":3669,"position":2},"title":"The Orientalism of Barack Obama","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 28, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Terry Scambray New Oxford Review Of course the documentary movie,\u00a02016: Obama's America, was timed by the conservative, Dinesh D'Souza, to discredit the president. Nonetheless, there can't be much doubt that the president's vision of America is driven by his attitude toward the perceived sins of European colonialism and his\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Retrospective"","block_context":{"text":"Retrospective","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/retrospective\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6942,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/governing-by-pen-and-phone\/","url_meta":{"origin":3669,"position":3},"title":"Governing by Pen and Phone","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 28, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Obama used to sigh that he was not a dictator who could act unilaterally. No more. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online\u00a0 Lately a weakened President Obama has fashioned a new attitude about consensual government: \u201cWe\u2019re not just going to be waiting for legislation in order to make sure\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Identity Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Identity Politics","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/identity-politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9539,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/9539\/","url_meta":{"origin":3669,"position":4},"title":"Comment from an Angry Reader:\u2026","author":"Megan Ring","date":"October 20, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Comment from an Angry Reader: Donald Trump's campaign statements have consisted of proposals including, but not limited to: \u00a0Violation of the NATO treaty by threatening to withhold assistance from allies based on alleged financial discrepancies; \u00a0Ordering the US Military to commit first-degree murder of non-combatant civilians (\"take out the families\"\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7556,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/was-benghazi-a-scandal\/","url_meta":{"origin":3669,"position":5},"title":"Was Benghazi a Scandal?","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 10, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Scandals \u2014 or fundamental transformations? by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review\u00a0Online If the CIA wanted to smuggle guns to Syria or interrogate al-Qaeda suspects in Benghazi, that was its business, not necessarily the administration\u2019s. To the degree Obama was involved in overseeing events in Libya, his involvement was most\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The World"","block_context":{"text":"The World","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"photo by Getty images via NRO","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/pic_giant_061014_A_0-500x291.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3669"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3669"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3669\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3670,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3669\/revisions\/3670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}