Liberal resistance to American foreign policy cannot be explained as a consequence of pacifism or even a reluctance to use force. With the exception of a few fringe figures, the cultural left is not pacifist. Its elected representatives—the Clintons, Ted Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer—frequently support the use of American force. For instance, President Clinton ordered systematic bombings in Bosnia and Kosovo during his terms in office. Clinton’s airstrikes were warmly endorsed in speeches by liberal Democrats such as Boxer, Paul Wellstone, David Bonior, and Carl Levin. Cultural liberals routinely call for America to intervene, by force if necessary, in places like Haiti and Rwanda. So liberals are not in principle opposed to regime change or to American intervention.
How, then, can we explain the mystery of liberal opposition to American foreign policy acting to secure liberal principles abroad? Superficially, the left’s position can be explained by its attachment to multiculturalism. In other words, liberal antagonism toward the beliefs and mores of traditional cultures is moderated by its conviction “Who are we to judge these cultures?” This concept of withholding judgment is a product of multiculturalism and cultural relativism, both of which are based on the theory that there are no universal standards to judge other cultures. Our standards apply only to us.
But again, this multicultural rhetoric is a smokescreen. Liberal activists mercilessly condemn other regimes and cultures when they are friendly toward the United States. In the past liberals showed no hesitation to condemn the Philippines under Marcos, Nicaragua under Somoza, and even Saddam Hussein’s Iraq (as long as America was allied with Hussein during the 1980s). Today liberal congressmen and talk show hosts are quick to deride pro-American despots like Egypt’s Mubarak and the Saudi royal family. As a practical matter, liberal multiculturalism inhibits liberal condemnation and liberal judgment only when the regime in question is a sworn enemy of the United States. The suspicion of treason, although distasteful, is inevitable. What else could account for this bizarre double standard? Why would so many liberals oppose American foreign policy actions even when they would advance liberal principles abroad?
Treason is not the problem. To see what is, let us consider two revealing exhibits. The first is a short article by a left-leaning writer, Kristine Holmgren, that appeared shortly after 9/11. Holmgren wrote, “Even in my waking hours, I am afraid.” Was she afraid of a second 9/11-style attack? Not at all. “Nor am I afraid of planes striking my home or my children dying in their beds.” What, then, was the source of Holmgren’s trepidation? “My fears are more practical,” she explained. Here in America, Holmgren wrote, the forces of Christian fundamentalism are gaining strength. They are threatening abortion rights and civil liberties. “My local school district is so afraid of adolescent sexuality, drug use and music videos that they are willing to suspend civil rights to proselytize for Jesus Christ.” Holmgren concludes on a grim note: “Fascism crept up on post–World War I Europe with the same soft, calm footsteps it is using these days in the United States.”5 Here in clear view is the cultural left’s mind-set. Just two months after 9/11, with its memory still fresh in the national consciousness, Holmgren candidly confesses that she is less scared of bin Laden than she is of Christian activists on her school board. In her view, bin Laden might do episodic damage, but the Christians are on their way to establishing a fascist theocracy in America!
For my second exhibit I offer excerpts from Senator Robert Byrd’s recent book Losing America. In an early chapter, Byrd faults President Bush for his repeated references to the Islamic radicals as evil. “Presidents must measure their words and look past such raw simplicities,” Byrd opined. “The notion of ‘evil’ and ‘evildoers’ tends to set one faith against another and could be seen as a slur on the Islamic faith. Bush’s draconian ‘them’ versus ‘us,’ ‘good’ and ‘evil,’ serves little purpose other than to divide and inflame.”6 On the face of it, this passage seems to suggest Byrd’s high-minded objection to using crude terms like “good” and “evil” to describe the world we live in. Byrd’s point is that even if those labels are superficially descriptive, we should avoid them because they create unnecessary hostility and division.
A little later on in Byrd’s book, however, we find Byrd comparing President Bush to Hermann Goering and the Nazis. Byrd accuses Bush of “capitalizing on the war for political purposes—using the war as a tool to win elections,” which is “an affront to the men and women we are sending to fight and die in a foreign land and without good reason.” Moreover, Byrd charges Bush with “a political gambit to keep the American people fearful” through a strategy of “silencing opposition” and diverting people’s attention toward the war on terror and away from “the country’s festering problems.”7 Now, if these charges are true—if Bush has concocted an unnecessary war that causes the deaths of American citizens for no reason other than to benefit himself politically—then he deserves impeachment and everlasting disgrace. Indeed, in some ways Bush would be worse than Goering because at least Goering believed in a cause larger than himself.
By these accusations, Byrd forces us to revise our interpretation of his earlier words. He shows, by implication rather than outright suggestion, that he agrees with Bush that some people are fundamentally evil and they deserve to be treated as such. Only, in Byrd’s analysis it is the Bush administration and its allies, rather than the Islamic radicals, who are the genuinely evil force in the world. Thus dividing and inflaming, which Byrd thinks a harsh and self-defeating strategy in dealing with Islamic fundamentalism, is precisely Byrd’s strategy in dealing with the Bush administration.
These examples show the wrongheadedness of the insinuation of liberal treachery. Holmgren and Byrd don’t hate America. What they hate is conservative America. The two are fiercely loyal to the American values that they cherish, and it is in the name of those values that they are ready to take on the Bush administration. The lesson of these examples is that the cultural left is unwilling to fight a serious and sustained battle against Islamic radicalism and fundamentalism because it is fighting a more threatening political battle against American conservatism and American fundamentalism. The left cannot support Bush’s efforts to promote liberal democracy abroad because it is more important for the left to reverse the nation’s conservative tide by defeating Bush and his socially conservatives allies at home. In other words, the left’s war is not against bearded Muslims who wear long robes and carry rifles; it is against pudgy white men who wear suits and carry Bibles. While the left is certainly not comfortable with Islamic mullahs, it is vastly more terrified of George Bush, Dick Cheney, Antonin Scalia, James Dobson, and Rush Limbaugh.
Why? From the vantage point of many liberals, our fundamentalists are as dangerous as their fundamentalists, and President Bush is no less a threat than bin Laden. Author Salman Rushdie, who should know something about this topic, asserts that “the religious fundamentalism of the United States is as alarming as anything in the much-feared world of Islam.” Columnist Maureen Dowd accused the Bush administration of following the lead of Islamic fundamentalists in “replacing science with religion, and facts with faith,” and creating in the process “jihad in America…a scary, paranoid, regressive reality.” Author and illustrator Art Spiegelman asserts, “We’re equally threatened by Al Qaeda and our own government.” Pursuing the analogy between Islamic fundamentalists and the Bush administration, columnist Wendy Kaminer described 9/11 as a “faith-based initiative.”8
But if the left sees Christian fundamentalism in the same way as Islamic fundamentalism, why doesn’t it fight the two with equal resolution? If Bush is as bad as bin Laden, why not expend equal effort to get rid of both? In reality, the cultural left is more indignant over Bush’s Christian fundamentalism than over bin Laden’s Islamic fundamentalism. Activist Cindy Sheehan makes this clear when she alleges that “the biggest terrorist in the world is George W. Bush.” Other leading figures on the left endorse the view that Bush and his supporters, not bin Laden and
Al Qaeda, are the real problem. Social critic Edward Said, who spent most of his career warning of the dangers of overestimating the threat of Islamic extremism, warned in a recent book that “the vast number of Christian fanatics in the United States,” who form “the core of George Bush’s support,” now represent “a menace to the world.” Jonathan Raban writes, “The greatest military power in history has shackled its deadly hardware to the rhetoric of fundamentalist Christianity.” Writer Jane Smiley finds the people who voted for Bush to be “predatory and resentful, amoral, avaricious, and arrogant…. They are full of original sin and have a taste for violence.” Eric Alterman fumes in The Nation, “Extremist right-wingers enjoy a stranglehold on our political system.” Author Jonathan Schell insists that “Bush’s abuses of presidential power are the most extensive in American history.” Author Garry Wills alleges that the Bush administration “weaves together a chain of extremisms encircling the polity…forming a necklace to choke the large body of citizens.” There is no indication that these liberal authorities regard Islamic fundamentalism with anything approaching this degree of alarm.9
The rhetoric of left-wing political leaders is equally revealing. In examining speeches by Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and Edward Markey, I am struck by what may be called “the indignation gap”—the vastly different level of emotion that the speakers employ in treating bin Laden and his allies as opposed to Bush and his allies. At first the speaker will offer a ritual condemnation of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda: “I am no fan of Osama Bin Laden.” “We can agree that Bin Laden is not a very nice guy.” Having gotten those qualifications out of the way, the left-wing politician will spend the rest of the speech lambasting the Bush conservatives with uncontrolled belligerence and ferocity. In recent addresses Senator Kennedy denounced “the rabid reactionary religious right” and maintained that “no president in America’s history has done more damage to our country than George W. Bush.” Senator Hillary Clinton accuses the Bush White House and the Republican Congress of “systematically weakening the democratic traditions and institutions on which this country was built. They are turning back the clock on the twentieth-century. There has never been an administration…more intent upon consolidating and abusing power. It’s very hard to stop people who have no shame…who have never been acquainted with the truth.” Congressman Edward Markey darkly warned, “They wish to wipe us out.”10
The “us” that Markey is concerned about here is not Americans in general but specifically liberals and leftists. Here, then, is a revealing clue to the motives of the left. Many in this camp are more exercised by Bush than they are about bin Laden because, as they see it, Islamic fundamentalism threatens to impose illiberal values abroad while American fundamentalism of the Bush type threatens to impose illiberal values at home. As leading figures on the left see it, the Islamic extremists pose a danger to the freedom and lifestyle of others, while their American equivalents pose a danger to us. Thus, for the left, the enemy at home is far more consequential and frightening than the enemy abroad.
I WANT TO say more about these liberal fears, but first I want to say a word about the conservative, or right-wing, understanding of 9/11. It is a common belief on the right that many Muslims—perhaps most Muslims—hate America because of a deep religious and cultural divide between our civilization and theirs. In this view, popularized by scholars such as Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington, Western civilization stands for modern values such as prosperity, freedom, and democracy, which the Muslim world rejects. In this conservative view, Islamic radicals lash out at us because they blame us for problems of poverty and tyranny that are actually the fault of Muslims themselves. One variant of this position holds that the radical Muslims are simply envious of American wealth and power.
How, then, do conservatives think America should respond to Muslim antagonism? Some on the right, like Pat Buchanan, as well as some libertarians, argue that the best way for America to protect itself from Muslim rage is to withdraw from the Middle East—to retreat behind our own borders. But the majority on the right, led by the Bush administration, insists that America has no choice but to fight the Islamic radicals, because if we don’t defeat them over there, they will bring the battle to us here. Most conservatives seem to agree with Bush that war is the best and only option. The general view on the right is that bin Laden and the Islamic radicals don’t despise us for what we do, they despise us for who we are. As President Bush has said, on various occasions, “They hate us because of our freedom.”
Is this really true? There is no evidence that Muslims—or even the Islamic fundamentalists—hate the West because the West is modern, or because the West embodies technology, prosperity, and democracy. There is a universal desire for prosperity in today’s world, and the Islamic world is no exception. Moreover, Islamic fundamentalists are not opposed to technology; it is technology that enables them to build bombs and fly planes into buildings. Many Al Qaeda operatives have scientific and technical (as opposed to religious) training. Even among Islamic fundamentalists, freedom is rarely condemned, and the term is often used in a positive sense, as in “Let us free ourselves from Western domination” or “Let us liberate Muslim land from Israeli occupation.” Finally, there is widespread support for democracy in the Muslim world. While bin Laden is an enemy of democracy, most of the organizations of radical Islam, including Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Muslim Brotherhood, have become champions of democracy. The reason is quite simple: the Islamic radicals have seen that if their countries have free elections, their group can win!
Shortly after the fall of Baghdad, graffiti began to appear on the walls of the city and its environs. The following scrawl caught my attention. “Marriage of the same sex became legal in America. Is this, with the mafia and drugs, what you want to bring to Iraq, America? Is this the freedom you promised?” Even if the source of this statement is of little consequence, the content is revealing. It is not an objection to freedom, but to the kind of freedom associated with drug legalization and homosexual marriage. As such, it is a vital clue to the sources of Muslim rage. And here is a quote from a recent videotape by Ayman al-Zawahiri, deputy of bin Laden and reputed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks: “The freedom we want is not the freedom to use women as a commodity to gain clients, win deals, or attract tourists; it is not the freedom of AIDS and an industry of obscenities and homosexual marriages; it is not the freedom of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.”11
What these statements convey is that these Islamic radicals do not hate America because of its wealth and power; they hate America because of how Americans use that wealth and power. They do not hate us for our freedom; they hate us because of what we do with our freedom. The radical Muslims are convinced that America and Europe have become sick, demented societies that destroy religious belief, undermine traditional morality, dissolve the patriarchal family, and corrupt the innocence of children. The term that Islamic radicals use to describe Western influence is firangi. The term means “Frankish” disease, and it refers to syphilis, a disease that Europeans first introduced to the Middle East.12 Today Muslims use the term in a metaphorical sense, to describe the social and moral corruption produced by the virus of Westernization.
The Muslims who hate us the most are the ones who have encountered Western decadence, either in the West or in their own countries. The revealing aspect of the 9/11 terrorists is not that so many came from Saudi Arabia, but that so many of them, like the ringleader, Muhammad Atta, and his Hamburg group, had lived in and been exposed to the West. My point is that their hatred was not a product of ignorance but of familiarity; not of Wahhabi indoctrination but of firsthand observation.
But isn’t it true, as many Americans believe, that American culture is broadly appealing around the world? Yes, and this is precisely why America and not Europe is the main target of the Islamic radicals. Decadence is arguably far worse in Europe than in America, and Europe has had its share of attacks, such as the Madrid train bombing of 2004 and t
he London subway bombing of 2005. But even in those cases the European targets were picked because of their governments’ support for America. The Islamic radicals focus on America because they recognize that it is the leader of Western civilization or, as they sometimes put it, “the greatest power of the unbelievers.” Bin Laden himself said in a 1998 interview, “What prompted us to address the American government is the fact that it is the head of the Western and crusading forces in their fight against Islam and against Muslims.”13 Moreover, Muslims realize that it is American culture and values that are penetrating the far corners of the globe, corroding ancient orthodoxies, and transforming customs and institutions. Many Americans, whatever their politics, generally regard such change as healthy and good. But this attitude is not shared in traditional societies, and it is virtually nonexistent in the Muslim world. America is feared and despised there not in spite of its cultural allure but because of it.
An anecdote will illustrate my point. Some time ago I saw an interview with a Muslim sheikh on a European TV channel. The interviewer told the sheikh, “I find it curious and hypocritical that you are so anti-American, considering that two of your relatives are living and studying in America.” The sheikh replied, “But this is not hypocritical at all. I concede that American culture is appealing, especially to young people. If you put a young man into a hotel room and give him dozens of pornography tapes, he is likely to find those appealing as well. What America appeals to is everything that is low and disgusting in human nature.”
There seems to be a growing belief in traditional cultures—a belief encouraged but by no means created by Islamic fundamentalism—that America is materially prosperous but culturally decadent. It is technologically sophisticated but morally depraved. As former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto puts it, “Within the Muslim world, there is a reaction against the sexual overtones that come across in American mass culture. America is viewed through this prism as an immoral society.” In his book The Crisis of Islam, Bernard Lewis rehearses what he calls the “standard litany of American offenses recited in the lands of Islam” and ends with this one: “Yet the most powerful accusation of all is the degeneracy and debauchery of the American way of life.”14 As these observations suggest, what angers religious Muslims is not the American Constitution but the scandalous sexual mores they see in American movies and television. What disgusts them is not free elections but the sights of hundreds of homosexuals kissing one another and taking marriage vows. The person that horrifies them the most is not John Locke but Hillary Clinton.
The Enemy At Home Page 2
