Of "Surrender Monkeys and Warmongers:" How the Left and Right ignore the current world scene, Part One

When it comes to how to deal with violence in our world today, both the left and right are stuck in approaches that at their base are non-intellectual. They are reflexive and can be used in any all situations. Foreign policy become tab a goes to slot b.

But that is not how the world works. We can't pour our theories into any and all situations. Life is not that mechanistic.

But for the partisans of left and right, it is. And that is dangerous.

After September 11, there were calls from the left that we should do things such as aplogize to the world's poor, change our stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The left looked at such people as binLaden and thought September 11 was a political problem. The poor of the world are speaking up and wanting a place at the table to make things right. The left for the most part, abhorred the ensuing conflict in Afghanistan seeming to fixate more on the deaths we cause than the outrageous human rights abuses the Taliban committed inlcuding the subjegation of women. The left holds to the view that war is always wrong, and the US is usally a bad character on the world scene. Many on the left think that the West is full of imperialists while the developping world are full of gentle well-meaning people that are always getting jacked by the West.

However, this views fails to understand Al Queda and fails to read the world. In the 70s and 80s, terrorism was done for political purposes. Croations, Palestinians, radical leftists, all waged war to get the world to listen to them. The left seemes to think that Al Queda is just like one of those groups circa 1975 fighting for some just cause. If the US would simply act justly, then they will leave us alone. But Al Queda is not about negotiation. They are not motivated by politics, but by a twisted form of religion. They have decided that the West is lazy and corrupt and revel in mass slaughter to punish the infidel. The 19 hijackers were willing to take their lives and the lives of 3,000 others because they believed their faith asked them to kill.

The Left should not be seeing Al Queda as the Palestinian terrorists of yore, but more like 21st century fascists. Christopher Hitchens coined the term Isamofascists and it makes sense. These so-called "freedom fighters" want nothing more than to wipe the US off the map. They are against the freedoms that we have.

What this means is that there are times when the Left must see that they are fates worse than the United States. They can't be consoled by negotiations. Sadly there are times when the sword must be raised and when a group threatens the very existence of world order, then raise it we must.

Part two soon to follow....