Post 9/11 Stupidities
By Len Magruder
The following, based on an article we released at the time, is a reminder of how the intellectual class misunderstood the situation shortly after 9/11, interpreting the needed response as therapy, or “understanding” instead of military action. The campus, and Hollywood, absolutely did not grasp what happened on 9/11.
A group of Hollywood celebrities took out an ad in The New York Times recently calling on the people of the U.S. to “Resist the war and repression loosed on the world by the Bush administration” The effect of the ad was to suggest that we face no danger from terrorists, that the real danger stems from our own “imperialism.”
These used the same old lies they used on Vietnam, that the “U.S. is an imperialist power bent on oppressing the poor people of the world, trying to destroy a people seeking only independence and a people’s revolution.” The ad mocked the idea of “good vs. evil” and argued that the real issue is “aggression abroad and repression at home.” Our acts of aggression, they claimed, include our “attack” on Afghanistan, the “trail of death and destruction” caused by Israel, and the blank check the U. S. government seeks, “to kill and bomb whoever they want.” They describe America as “under the thumb of repression,” a land with “free speech suppressed,” and “sitting on the edge of totalitarianism.” In other words, every toothless old hag of an argument from the 60’s they could find.
The answer, they said, is, “Refuse orders, resist a draft if instituted, support all resisters, and stop the machinery of war.” In other words, polarization, then paralysis in an hour of national crisis, then defeat, a repeat of Vietnam. Hollywood celebrities seem to have this love affair with treason, totalitarianism, and genocide. What in the world makes people as morally confused as these think their views need to be considered by the American people?
Focus! What does Al Qaeda want to do? They want to kill you. They want to kill every man, woman, and child in the United States. Bin Laden in 1998, announcing jihad: “Divide their nation, tear them to shreds, destroy their economy, burn their companies, ruin their welfare, sink their ships, and kill them on land, sea, and air…May Allah torture them by your hands.”
We are up against a people who are trained to give their lives to bring a nuclear weapon into your home town.
Then there is the campus. Here is what was said on the nearby University of Kansas campus as reported in the local newspaper in the days immediately following 9/11, followed by other remarks around the nation at the time. . Collectively they reflect the delusion on campus that 9/11 was due to “something we did to them” and the need to make therapeutic amends.
“To end the threat posed by fanatical Islamic terrorists, we must end the poverty, oppression, and exploitation of the Arab world.” –Matthew Overstreet, senior, Augustas.
“There is a wide variety of interpretations of these texts in the Arab world. If we ask the question, what is it about Islam that provokes these types of actions, we are barking up the wrong tree.” -Villalon, professor.
“The Sept. 11 attacks on the East Coast were crimes - not acts of war - we are not dealing here with anything remotely resembling what is thought of as war.” –Philip Schrodt, professor of political science.”
“The kids who crashed into those jets are just like you and me, only born under different circumstances.” –K.U. professor.
“There is a growing feeling in parts of the Arab world that their lives don’t count as much as those of Westerners. It was like the little kid in class constantly getting picked on. The attackers were little kids who decided to strike back”– Margaret Rausch, professor of religion.
“I think it’s a fundamental conflict and I don’t see that Americans are ready to change.”–Tim Miller, K.U. professor.
FROM OTHER CAMPUSES:
“Any one who would blow up the Pentagon would get my vote” –Professor Richard Berthold, University of New Mexico.
“The attacks are no more despicable that the massive acts of terrorism, deliberate killing of civilians for political purposes that the U.S. Government has committed in my lifetime.” –Prof. Robert Jensen, Houston University.
Jessicas Stillman at Rutgers objected to printing a picture of the American flag in the school paper because it “shows blind support for this country and limits those un-patriotic voices.”
Lisa Mann of Wake Forest, “America is not a ‘nice’ country. We are kidding ourselves in thinking we have been wronged.”
Activists blasting America crashed vigils for the dead of 9/11 at Berkeley, the University of Michigan, and Chico State. Professor George Right said Bush seeks to “kill innocent people” in the Middle East and then “colonize” the Arab world to “seize oil for the Bush family.”
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By far the most naive in their efforts to analyze the terrorist phenomenon are our liberal academics, the “root-cause” crowd, the ones who think that by sympathetically attempting to see things from the al-Qaeda point of view, we can figure out some way to satisfy their grievances. “It must be something we did to them.” What nonsense. It is something they did to themselves. They are killing out of the rage of their own impotence and failure, the failure of their own religion to produce freedom, education and prosperity. They are using a strict interpretation of Islam to murderously attack the envied superiority of Western civilization. Unfortunately, the scriptures that permit this militant interpretation are right there in the Koran, which is why the Muslim world, in an unparalleled moral failure, did not unambiguously and universally condemn the 9/11 attack on America. Islam is not a religion of peace. It is a religion of war. It has no equivalent to “love your enemies.” And non-Muslim religions have no equivalent to “kill the unbelievers.” The terrorists are not “extremists.” The are the true Muslims they claim to be because they adhere strictly to the letter of the Koran, and the rest of the Muslim world admire them for this. Listen to Hassein Massawi, the former leader of Hezbollah, “We are not fighting you so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you.” When Al Qaeda killed 11 French submariners in Karachi and then attacked the French oil tanker off the coast of Yemen, a spokesman for the terrorists said, “We would have preferred to hit a U.S. ship, but no problem, they are all infidels.” That’s the “root cause.” Infidels.
Frightening though it may be, the issue of terrorism and the possibility of a nuclear attack on the West must be faced. Still, even at this late date, except for Fox, and some programs on CNN, no other mainstream media has done anything about the issue out of a profound “multiculturalist” or “therapeutic” misunderstanding of the crisis, and of course, the universities have created a major center of weakness on the issue of national security by blaming America instead of Islam from what it imagines to be higher moral ground. The truth is that what the university through, for example, MESA, ( the Middle East Studies Association), is teaching students about the war on terrorism and Islam are lies. Said Middle East expert Stephen Schwartz in a recent article, “In failing to discern, and educate the American leadership and public about the real threat of Islamic
extremism, the Middle East Studies mafia on campus - to call it as it is - has disarmed the country in the face of great danger, perhaps the most outrageous academic, media, and political coverup of modern times: the willful campaign to suppress worldwide awareness of violent extremism.” As Daniel Pipes, our best Middle East expert, recently said, “Why have academics proven so inept at understanding the great contemporary issues of war and peace, starting with the Cold War, then Vietnam, the Kuwait War, and now the War on Terror?” Look at how campus thugs attacked “IslamoFascism Awareness Week ” all over the country, a program designed to help students understand the true danger of Islamic jihad.
Hollywood, the university, and the mainstream media are the most dangerous internal forces in America. In their desire to force a left/liberal aganda on America , they have lost the ability to distinguish right from wrong, good from evil , and can only offer a flabby moral equivalence that cannot deal with the crisis. This is the same reason they were so naive about Vietnam. They didn’t understand the moral difference between Democracy and Communism.
In the 60’s no debate was allowed. Those who were opposed to freedom for the South Vietnamese had the field to themselves, and that is why they won. But not this time. The soldiers are back, and they know that the danger is mortal, and they who best know the meaning of freedom must lead a strong counterattack to see that freedom is preserved. As Thomas Sowell, the noted African-American scholar at Stanford University and national columnist, wrote us on September 19, 1998, “Academic reform is necessary, and no one has more moral authority to demand that they clean up their act than those who put their lives on the line for this country.” Reform Hollywood, too.
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