Letters to the Editor
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The Left does have a tendency
to be suspicious of all security issues, or at least schizoid about them. I thought Kerry was the perfect embodiement of that attitude: the left finally picks a genuine war hero as its standard-bearer in 2004, but he's better known as an anti-war activist. The Left seems to have a problem saying the U.S. has legitimate security interests. As Mr. Lynch points out below, we'd rather talk about how the U.S. someway, somehow (usually just by being an imperfect nation like any other -- big news) had a hand in the problem that led to the threat. Other nations do not do this with the same kind of obsessiveness.
O'Hehir's article notes that some on the Left even today are not convinced that radical Islam is a real danger to the U.S. or the West. It may not be as great as the Administration wants us to believe it is, but I don't think anyone in their right mind can deny it is a real force that has to be reckoned with. These people moved beyond the beer hall putsch stage a while ago. The time to deal with them is now.
I remember driving home from work when the dust from the World Trade Center hadn't even settled and there was already a group of people on a street corner in my town carrying signs that read "no to war in Afghanistan" and other similar sentiments. Now I didn't stop to ask them for their political affiliation, but I'm pretty sure they weren't conservative Republicans. It's that kind of thing that makes middle America suspicious of liberals' committment to its safety.
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A couple of points
It shouldn't matter, but I want to preface this by saying that I'm a proud white American: "Rakhia" is my nom de guerre, and it's not "Middle Eastern" anyway as far as I know.
1. 9-11 was an impressive attack, but you and I don't really know who planned and executed it. And in terms of real warfare, I'm sorry but it wasn't THAT impressive. When al-Qaeda levels a city like we did Fallujah I'll start to be impressed. And it's been FIVE YEARS people! If these guys can't mount TWO attacks in FIVE years we are talking about a bunch of jokers.
2. Assuming it was "Islamists" and Islamists only that destroyed the WTC, the US certainly was not a pure victim. The Taliban were our product: who trained, armed, and financed the mujahedin? Who did bin Laden work for? And who is pissing off the Arab world by supporting Zionist apartheid?
3. When a couple of rednecks blew up a government building, no one talked about the rising tide of redneck Christian totalitarianism and how the West had to stand up and fight and the liberals had to fight a war even better and smarter than the Republicans. (By the way, a war against Christian rednecks might be one I could actually get behind!)
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I am finally angry at a liberal
I have been arguing with my conservative acquaintances for a long time that their movement is basically founded on a level of unrealistic paranoia- name me one liberal who actually wants to weaken the United States in the war on terror? Name me one person who really feels that patriots are more dangerous than terrorists? Well,I cant say that anymore, I just found one.
It's like trying to explain why 2+2 equals 4, or why I think the sky is blue. Does Andrew O'Hehir really not recognize the existance of a rising world-wide fundementalist movement within Islam? Forget Osama Bin Laden- has he never heard of the Islamic Brotherhood? The World Trade Center bombing (the first one)? Wahabism, and the relationship of that school of Islam with the Saudi elite establishment? Is he really not aware that there is an organized movement of muslem clerics who preach violence against the West? Does he live on this planet?
Can he not see the difference between Rick Santorum and Osama Bin Laden? Where are Santorum's guns? Where are his explosives? When has he encouraged anyone to kill liberals? Realistically, what are the odds that Santorum or anyone else is going to turn the United States into an actual functioning Theocracy? It's nil- if William Jennings Bryan couldnt do it, no one can. But what are the odds that someone could turn a major muslum nation in the Middle East into one? Like, say, Iran?
What we must always remember is that the necessity of opposing the enemies of civilisation overseas does not free us from the equally crucial responsibility to defend our rights at home. Just because, as liberals, we recognize an obligation to defend democracy and human rights in other parts of the world, does not mean that we forget either the lessons of Vietnam, nor the lessons of Joe McCarthy and Richard Nixon. These are not mutually exclusive positions. Yet we must also never make the mistake of believing that those who compete with us for political power are as dangerous as those who seek to use violence to obtain their goals. The proper response to Patriot II was protest. The proper response to Al Queada is to fight back.
Vietnam was a mistake. We should never have been there. So is Iraq- we should never have invaded. That ideology which accepts the possibility of military intervention overseas allowed us to make those mistakes- at great and avoidable cost. But that same ideology also allowed us to intervene many other times- World War II, World War I, the Civil War, Bosnia- in which it is generally recognized that we as a nation did the right thing. The opposite extreme- peaceful means at all costs- has allowed us to stand aside and do nothing when we should have intervened- Rwanda, and now Darfur.
Do not make the mistake of rejecting one extreme doctrine only to fall for the opposite one. It's hard to be a moderate- an extremist only has opponents to one side of the spectrum, but a moderate has two sets of opponents, not just one. I assure you I am prepared to fight to defend our rights against unreasonable search and seizure- I reject the paranoia of the right. But I cannot accept that the extremes of the other side- the paranoia of the left. Just because George Bush and Rick Santorum believe that we should intervene in Iraq, and we disagree, does not mean that we must abandon our obligation to fight on the side of the oppressed, even if it means going to war in order to do so.
Thinking that we as Americans have a special place in the world is dangerous- it can lead us to hubris and to costly mistakes. But to fear American power as even more dangerous than that of nationalism or theocracy or the anarchy of failed states is an even greater mistake. To not see a difference between what we did in Vietnam, or what we are doing now in Iraq, and what the Taliban did in Afganistan, or what the Serbs did in Sarajevo, well, that's like asking someone to prove to you that the sky is blue. Just go look.