Dinesh d'Souza Blames Liberals for 9/11

Technorati Tags: Dinesh d'Souza, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Israel, Middle East, liberals, 9/11, U.S. troops in Iraq, United States, the war on terror

Dinesh d'Souza blames liberals, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton for 9/11:

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. To understand this, it's not enough to revisit the factors that led to the Iraq invasion. We must consider the roots of 9/11 itself. Only by understanding the policies that sowed the seeds of 9/11 can we intelligently decide how best to proceed in fighting the war on terror.

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. 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. 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.

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.

Those are some impressively intelligent, scholarly arguments there, I must say. Let's take them one by one:

"American colonialism in the Middle East? The U.S. has no history of colonialism there."

Who said we did? Then, again, Britain and France -- our traditional allies for the last century -- have histories of colonialism in the Middle East. After World War I, the Middle East was carved up by the victorious Western powers (mostly Britain and France, but the U.S. certainly supported European colonialist ambitions in places like Lebanon and Iran).

"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."

This is an adolescent's argument. "Mom, Dad, you can't be angry with me for hanging out with gang members, because there are no other social networking opportunities in the neighborhood."

A bad argument in any event, but especially when there are other social networking opportunities in the neighborhood. In the Middle East, the U.S. has a long history of choosing to support brutal dictators over more moderate, and even democratically elected, leaders.

"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."

I doubt there are very many Afghans or other Middle Easterners who think that U.S. support for the mujahideen in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union was motivated by concern for the welfare of Muslims or a principled belief in Muslim liberation. Afghanistan for the U.S. was a proxy war with the Soviet Union. To call it an example of the U.S. "fighting on the side of the Muslims" is absurd. And the Persian Gulf War? What is d'Souza talking about? Invading one Muslim country to get it out of another Muslim country in order to safeguard Americans' access to oil reserves is "fighting on the side of the Muslims" -- how?

If I wanted to be picky, I could also point out that two examples in a history of Western involvement with the Middle East that goes back to 1918 hardly deserves the adjective "frequent" -- even if they were legitimate instances of U.S. support for Muslim concerns. How does d'Souza imagine that these somehow wipe out almost 60 years of U.S. support for Israel to the total exclusion of the rights of Palestinians? I wouldn't expect two very flawed examples of U.S. support for Muslims to persuade the Arab world to overlook or excuse the fact that the U.S. has condemned and attacked Arab countries for violating international law while backing Israel and refusing to countenance even the mildest criticism of Israel's actions when Israel did exactly the same things.

Dinesh d'Souza's arguments are shallow, uninformed, and unconvincing. The right's standards for intellectualism are laughably low.