James Wolcott reviews galleys of conservative intellectual Dinesh D'Souza's new book, The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11, and it sounds bad. Just the subtitle sounds bad. If it was The Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11 then I'd figure it was an attempt to blame 9/11 on Clinton's foreign policies. That's not an argument that's unreasonable on it's face; it's debatable.

But to blame 9/11 on the cultural left? The Taliban and Al-Qaeda attacked us because of what? Gay marriage? Raunchy music lyrics? Women without veils?

Tim Noah had a few words to say about this book in Slate a few weeks ago, and I've been following Radley Balko's concerns about it.

Wolcott's a bit crazy, but I think this part is reasonably coherent:

The theme of the book is quite simple, and vile.

"In this book I make a claim that will seem startling at the outset. The cultural left in this country is responsible for causing 9/11."

...

"I am saying that the cultural left and its allies in Congress, the media, Hollywood, the nonprofit sector [...], and the universities are the primary cause of the volcano of anger toward America that is erupting from the Islamic world."

...

"I realize that this is a strong charge," D'Souza writes, "one that no one has made before."

The reason it hasn't been made before is that it's a sleazy, shameless, ignorant, ahistorical, tendentious, meretricious lie, one that was waiting for the right brazen liar to come along to promote it, and here he is, and his name is Dinesh D'Souza, who's fatuous and fuddy-duddyish enough to think that it's Britney Spears, the rap lyrics of 2 Live Crew, and the buggering photographs of the late Robert Mapplethorpe that have Islam in a tiz. This is someone so out of touch with pop culture that he thinks liberals look down on risque sitcoms like Will & Grace because "their moral depravity is not highbrow enough for their taste." Does that description fit anyone you know?

Apparently, D'Souza even brings up Piss Christ, which is pretty amazing since (1) that was over a decade-and-a-half ago, (2) South Park has far worse stuff about Jesus, and (3) would Muslim fanatics really get upset over a lack of reverence for Jesus?

(Actually, I'm pretty sure D'Souza's point about Piss Christ is the lack of respect for religion in general, so point 3 doesn't really hold, but I'll take any excuse to link to that South Park video.)

Right after 9/11 a lot of pundits on the right criticized the left (correctly, in many cases) for asking "Why do they hate us?" as if we were to blame for 9/11. I guess some people on the right are starting to agree with them.

Today, I have a rant...

It's about part of a recent editorial called "Playing Politics In Wartime" in The Jewish Press by former New York mayor Ed Koch. Marathon Pundit, a friend of this blog, quotes the following passage with some approval:

Why do so many Americans refuse to face the fact that our country is at war with international terrorism?

The leading terrorist group, Al Qaeda, is fighting us on the ground in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Both Iran and North Korea are threatening nuclear war. And yet many Americans, including some Congressional Democrats, denounce President Bush – and in so doing, weaken our country’s ability to resist Islamic fascism. One Congressional Democrat, John Conyers of Michigan, announced his intention to impeach the president when Republicans lose control of both Houses of Congress.

There is something terribly wrong with people seeking to demean and weaken the president in wartime, thereby strengthening our country’s enemies. As a result of the language and tactics of those opposed to our presence in Iraq, our enemies have been emboldened, believing the American public to be sharply divided on the war, and in fact at war with itself.

To other countries, Americans appear pitted against one another not in an election, but in a verbal bloodbath, convincing the world we are impotent – a paper tiger.

Unlike my esteemed colleague, I find a lot to disagree with in this message.

In order to have a democracy like ours, you have to have elections. In order to have meaningful elections, you have to allow all sides to make an argument to the people, and that argument can include criticism of the other side, even if the other side currently holds the office under contention, even if the criticism is vicious, and even in time of war.

I don't see how it can be any other way. Being an elected official, even the President, means we get to kick your ass around the schoolyard whenever we feel like it. If that means people are going to "demean and weaken the president in wartime", so be it. It's part of the price we pay for having a democracy.

I'm not necessarily saying that the opposition is correct, and I'm certainly not saying the President's supporters shouldn't try to counter their arguments.

But that's not what Ed Koch is doing. He's not engaging the opposition's arguments and trying to prove them wrong and the President right. Instead, he's trying to convince us that the opposition shouldn't be speaking at all. I suppose that's pretty smart as a political tactic, but it's a shitty way to run a democracy.

In fact, I think this shows that Ed Koch is losing his faith in democracy. And he's not the only one. I'm only half kidding when I say that I think this is a form of Stockholm Syndrome. I know Ed Koch and the others haven't been kidnapped, but something similar to Stockholm Syndrome occurs in other contexts as well. Wikipedia puts it this way:

Loyalty to a more powerful abuser—in spite of the danger that this loyalty puts the victim in—is common among victims of domestic abuse, battered partners and child abuse... In many instances the victims choose to remain loyal to their abuser, and choose not to leave him or her, even when they are offered a safe placement in foster homes or safe houses. This syndrome was described by psychoanalysts of the object relations theory school...as the phenomenon of psychological identification with the more powerful abuser.

So some people see our enemies commit a stunning atrocity on 9/11 and they become worried that in some way our enemies are better than us, so they want us to be more like our enemies. They see that our enemies are cruel and argue that we should be more cruel. The see that our enemies are suicidal religious fanatics and argue that we should be suicidal religious fanatics. Now Ed Koch thinks that because our enemies don't understand democracy, we should be less democratic.

I do agree with Ed Koch about one thing. He says this sort of thing makes us look weak and emboldens our enemies which makes international conflicts more difficult. I think he's probably right about that.

One of the unique weaknesses of a democratic government is that our collective indecision is on view for everyone to see. We are unable to pretend to have more resolve than we actually have. Despots like Kim Jung Il can rattle their sabers and talk tough, and no one is sure if they really mean it. We, on the other hand, make these decisions in public. If we're collectively uncertain, then our enemies know it. Our indecision shows. We can't bluff.

The other half of that problem is that foreign despots and terrorists are unfamiliar with the ways of democracies and don't understand our strengths.

When George Bush was elected in 2000, he came about as close to losing as anyone could and still be called Mr. President. He lost the popular vote, and he won in the electoral college only after a bitter battle in the courts. A lot of people disagreed with the final decision of the Supreme Court, but we all knew that the Justices of the Supreme Court had been appointed by elected Presidents and confirmed by elected Senators, according to a process laid out in a Constitution drafted by elected representatives and approved by other elected representatives.

That's why, come inauguration day, George Bush became the President of the United States and everyone knew it. Oh, a lot of people didn't like it, and some of them postured and tried to pretend he wasn't the President, but everyone knew that by the end of the day, George Bush would be in charge. And because we all believed it would happen that way, it did.

Later, when Congress voted to approve the invasion of Iraq, everyone in this country knew what was going to happen next. We were going to invade Iraq.

We may hate our politicians and suspect them of many crimes, but we believe in the democratic process and the rule of law that goes with it. We act on those beliefs too, and that gives us great power. In fact, I think one of the reasons democracies have such fierce arguments is because they command enormous power, so their decisions are meaningful and important.

So I believe our enemies may well be encouraged by the messiness of our democratic process, but that process and our belief in it is the source of much of our strength. Keeping our democratic tradition gives us the strength to prevail, and that strength is a lot more important than this particular president or this particular war.

I'm not really worried that Ed Koch's view will catch on. We may have complaints about the way our government is run (see, e.g. the whole rest of my blog) but our faith in our form of government has the strength of stone.

The United States remains one of the few nations to erupt into a civil war and come out the other side still a democracy. In fact, the American Civil War was fought through an election year in the North, and Abraham Lincoln had to run for re-election. In the South, Jefferson Davis also came to power through a democratic process.

That faith in democracy is still alive. On 9/11, on United Flight 93, when some of the passengers realized what was going on, they had to decide what to do about it. You know how they did that? You know what these people did while on an airplane controlled by terrorists?

They voted. Democracy is in our bones.

I'd write some more, but I have a lot to do today. Our condominium association is having its annual board meeting tonight, and my wife and I are up for re-election.

Update: The meeting was a total success: Some other folks stepped up to be on the board.

My wife and I watch 24 because it's a decent action/suspense show. This season, however, we've noticed that they sure seem to torture a lot of people on the show. And I'm not talking about the bad guys. It's the good people of CTU (Counter Terrorism Unit) who do the torturing, because the bad guys have all the information.

So far they've tortured the Secretary of Defense's estranged son (innocent) [Update: not quite], several terrorists (they knew a lot), a mercenary (who knew a thing or two), a CTU employee (innocent), and Jack Bauer's girlfriend's husband (innocent). It's all a bit disturbing.

Columnist Cal Thomas (whose most recent book is, ahem, The Wit and Wisdom of Cal Thomas) thinks that Jack Bauer and the torture-happy agents of CTU have the right idea:

An ACLU-type lawyer shows up at CTU headquarters (he's been tipped off by a Marwan minion) with a court order forbidding torture of the suspect. Jack Bauer concocts a plan and gets the man released. When the lawyer leaves, Bauer grabs the suspect outside CTU and tortures him until he discloses the location of Marwan.

Bauer leads a team and is about to arrest Marwan and save the country from a nuclear attack when the acting president orders the Secret Service to arrest Bauer for violating his and the court's order prohibiting torture. Marwan escapes, and the gripping drama continues.

This was one of the dumbest sequences all season. They've been torturing people left and right for relatively unimportant reasons all season and when they're finally faced with a situation where they literally have to torture someone who knows about nuclear terrorism, the President balks. It's not the same President as earlier in the season (long story), but somebody should have told him that this wouldn't even be the first person they've tortured today.

But I digress. Cal Thomas explains where this fits in:

All of this is relevant to real life and the scarier drama that is being played out by the United States Army, which last week announced it is preparing to issue a new interrogations manual that specifically bars the use of "harsh" techniques of the type used at Abu Ghraib prison.

Thomas goes on to explain the limits the manual sets on interrogations and gets to:

If the Army nabs a person it suspects of knowing the location of a nuclear bomb that is about to wipe out an American city, would the interrogators and their military and civilian superiors refuse to use torture to squeeze the information out of the captive?

That was precisely the scenario on "24." Agent Jack Bauer rightly chose the greater good - saving millions of lives - over the niceties imposed by those whose manual seems inspired by "The Amy Vanderbilt Complete Book of Etiquette."

So many of those who want us to torture prisoners for information eventually bring up this scenario—"What if there's a hidden nuclear bomb and..." —as if it was a big flaw in the whole "torture is bad" position. All they've done is proven that there are some hard choices and maybe that the no-torture position isn't an absolute. My response is that if, God forbid, some terrorists have a nuclear bomb and are threatening to kill millions of innocent people then yes, you can go ahead and torture them if it will help save all those people.

Now that I've admitted there are extreme conditions where torture might be permissible, let me ask Cal Thomas a question: There have been several serious incidents of torture at Abu Ghraib. So how many nuclear bombs have we found?

The new Army interrogation manual is about handling real-world prisoners who have information about the locations of ammo dumps, or the latest sacrificial fool to occupy the al-Qa'ida 3rd-in-command position.

Cal Thomas's article has more problems:

We are dealing with people who have repeatedly demonstrated they have no moral constraints and are willing to perpetrate mass murder while practicing their religiously twisted ideology in pursuit of their objectives.

I'm right there with you, Cal. Go on...

These people are evil to the core.

Amen, brother! Speak the truth!

Are we not paying attention to the beheading videos? The barbarians are at the gate. In fact, they have broken down the gate.

Bring it on home!

This war won't be won (at least by our side) if we impose on ourselves restrictions that the terrorists do not impose on themselves.

There you go! Cal Thomas wants us to be more like our enemy, the people he's just finished describing as having no moral constraints and willing to commit mass murders, the people who are evil to the core, the beheaders, and the barbarians.

That's not a plan for winning a war. That's a rejection of western civilization.