The Enemy At Home

Dinesh D'Souza's has a great article about the war on terror and the enemy in our own backyard. Read the entire article here, and check out this and this. The following is a great excerpt.

If you assume that the activist left wants to prevent the Islamic radicals, who already control Iran, from winning their second major victory in Iraq, then its rhetoric is baffling. If you presume the left-wing activist groups are working hard for the war on terror to succeed, their policies become incomprehensible. On the other hand if you assume they want Bush to fail in Iraq, they don't care if Iraq falls into insurgent hands, and they're generally on the side of Bin Laden and his allies, then their statements and actions make perfect sense.

But in a deeper way, the behavior of the left and its political allies is a mystery. After all, the Islamic radicals are the most illiberal forces in the world. Leftists know how the Bin Laden and Khomeini types feel about Hillary Clinton and Barney Frank. So why doesn't the left want to fight the broadest and most aggressive campaign possible against these sworn enemies of liberal values?

Here is the reason. If America's war on terror succeeds, the result is a big win for Bush and his conservative allies. Recall the left's seething hatred for Bush, a man whom historian Sean Wilentz terms "the very worst president in all of American history." Ted Kennedy says, "No president in America's history has done more damage to our country than George W. Bush." They left doesn't like Bin Laden, but it has a pathological hatred for Bush

From the left's point of view, Bin Laden wants sharia in Baghdad but Bush wants sharia in Boston. It is Bush, not Bin Laden, who threatens liberal values at home. The left blames Bush and his religious conservative allies for blocking the campaign for homosexual marriage. One more Bush court appointment and the abortion right secured in Roe v. Wade might be in jeopardy.

The left, once the party of unions and the working man, is today the party of sex and "gender issues." So the left regards Bush as a greater threat than Bin Laden to its social values, and in some ways it is right to feel that way. Bush, the near enemy, is more dangerous to the left than Bin Laden, the far enemy.

But is the left willing to risk an American debacle in Iraq and in the war on terror in order to rout its enemy at home? Does the left actually want "another Vietnam"?

Dinesh D'Souza is the author of The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11, just published by Doubleday. D'Souza is the Rishwain Fellow at the Hoover Institution. Website: dineshdsouza.com. Email: dineshjdsouza@aol.com.