America the Blameworthy

Victor Davis Hanson examines the culture of blame and in particular, takes Dinesh D'Souza to task.

Now there is another angle to the "blame America" game, this time from the secular right. In his book "The Enemy at Home," Dinesh D'Souza, of the Hoover Institution (where I work as well), charges our decadent culture turns off traditional Muslims -- otherwise the potential allies of American conservatives -- and often renders them sympathetic to jihadist rhetoric.

He then goes further, arguing that the cultural permissiveness and obscenity of our leftists indirectly created a bin Laden. Now in a de facto alliance with the terrorists, the left, according to Mr. D'Souza, plots an end to traditional America.

Mr. D'Souza's solution is for conservatives here to embrace conservative Muslims, in a shared struggle against both the American left that misrepresented us and the jihadists who now misrepresent them.

But Mr. D'Souza's strained effort to fault millions of Americans for September 11 proves no more convincing than was Susan Sontag's or Jerry Falwell's.

First, he libels a number of "domestic insurgents" who "want bin Laden to win." His list is nonsensical. Whatever one may think of the wisdom of Jimmy Carter or the late Molly Ivins, or of intellectuals like Tony Judt, Martha Nussbaum and Garry Wills, none of them wanted al Qaeda to defeat the United States -- a victory that would have ended liberal tolerance here.

Read it all.

If We Fail in Iraq

As usual, Victor Davis Hanson nails it. Still, I doubt the nattering nabobs are listening. Their hatred for George W. Bush and America have absolutely consumed them.

Democrats and liberals should likewise realize that for all their hatred of George Bush and the partisan points to be gained by coddling up to the libertarian and paleo-conservative Right, George Bush’s embrace of freedom was far closer to their own past rhetoric than almost any Republican administration in history. And such an effort to foster democracy was in the long run smart as well, since ultimately a free Iraq would be the worst nightmare of the Islamic jihadists — as we read repeatedly in the rantings of Dr. Zawahiri.

In short, the next Democratic president who wishes to do something about the genocide in Darfur or another mass murderer in the Middle East, will find no support from Republicans, or — in no small part due to liberals’ slurs against the war they voted for — from the country at large.