Author: Bala Ambati
Publication: The Chronicle
Date: November 6, 2002
URL: http://www.chronicle.duke.edu/vnews/display.v/ART/2002/11/06/3dc8c798cf595
I'm proud to be a liberal. I've
been a liberal all my life, espousing civil rights, environmental protection,
fiscal prudence, energy independence, gun control, educational uplift,
stands against military dictatorships, etc. I believe firmly in individuals
thinking of causes greater than their own and translating such impulses
into public policies to change society for the better.
Which is why I have been appalled,
disgusted, and ashamed at the direction so many liberals have taken in
the weeks and months since Sept. 11. Almost immediately, many left-wingers
blamed America or Israel for the attacks (some still do). When idiotarian's
canards of the CIA or Mossad being responsible were shown transparently
absurd and asinine, these same people blamed U.S. policy with respect towards
Muslims or Israel as the root cause for the attacks, conveniently forgetting
the attacks were hatched while a U.S. president worked harder and engineered
a better deal than anyone in history for a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict and that same president had staked American blood and treasure
for no material interest to protect Muslims in Kosovo, Bosnia and Somalia,
while the so-called "guardians of Islam" behind Sept. 11 did nothing. American
attacks on al Qaeda and their Taliban hosts continue to be met with loathing
and outrage that the U.S. government would take action to meet its primary
responsibility--protecting its citizens. Any U.S. military action now is
tarred with accusations of imperialism.
So-called liberals who mindlessly
chant these taunts should reflect on facts. Who targets innocent civilians,
whether in hijacked planes, office towers, Hindu shrines in India, Christian
missions in Pakistan, discos and pizza parlors in Tel Aviv, beach resorts
in Bali, theater-goers in Moscow or Kenyan embassy workers in Nairobi?
Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. What is the agenda of Islamic fundamentalist
terrorists? It's not difficult to find out. Read the words of Osama bin
Laden's fatwas, the International Islamic Front, Mohammed Atta's farewell
letter or the sermons of countless imams and clerics in the Middle East.
Unlike liberals, they think not in terms of today or tomorrow, but have
objectives over the next 50 years: destroying Israel, shattering India,
neutralizing Europe, crippling the United States and forming an Islamic
caliphate state based on sharia modeled on the Taliban from Andalusia (the
Arabic word for conquered Spain in the Middle Ages) to the Philippines,
with world conversion to their perverse brand of Islam to follow. It's
not an implausible scenario, considering their access to oil money and
brainwashable young men, Israel's existential struggle against terrorists
within and hostile armies surrounding it, America's porousness, proliferation
of nuclear weapons, the death of a thousand cuts being inflicted on India
and Europe's demographic and moral implosion. There is a term for thisâ€"imperialism,
Islamic fundamentalist imperialism.
When liberals denounce the United
States for the regrettable but minimized and unavoidable civilian casualties
of U.S. action in Afghanistan, do they consider the consequences of the
Taliban regime to Afghans, let alone Americans? The Taliban slaughtered
1.5 million Afghans in their reign's 5 years; US action stopped an annual
murder of 300,000 Afghans, and allowed girls to go to school without being
beaten! Why do liberals now defend one of the world's most repressive regimes,
Iraq, which has slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Kurds and Shiites,
used chemical and biological weapons on its own people and seeks nuclear
weapons to expand a reign of terror? Why do liberals"whitewash the world's
most illiberal regime, Saudi Arabia, which institutionalizes gender apartheid
and stoning of gays while banning freedom of speech and religion? Why do
liberals turn a blind eye in the name of multiculturalism and relativism
to the sharia laws that mandate stoning of women who have children out-of-
wedlock (even if due to rape) in Nigeria or to similar laws that give women
half the legal credibility of men in Pakistan? Is the answer a covert racism
that Muslims are incapable of freedom, democracy and knowing right from
wrong? Why are liberals eager to pin the root causes for Sept. 11 on the
United States, but dumbfounded when asked for the root cause of Daniel
Pearl's murder? It recalls Stalin's remark, "The death of one is a tragedy,
that of a million a statistic."
It takes true courage to be a dove,
but no honor accrues to being an ostrich. The Procrustean logic of blaming
all the world's ills on the United States blinds these liberals to real
evil. Shredding facts to fit pet notions is a poor alibi for the cowardice
of willful ignorance of reality. I implore fellow liberals to think of
the consequences were Islamic fundamentalist imperialism to succeed. The
test of truth is not which is the conventionally weaker power nor is the
measure of morality zealousness for suicide; only intellectual sloths fail
to grasp that. Clemenceau said "He who is not liberal in his youth has
no heart; he who does not become conservative with age has no head." Sadly,
too many liberals have lost not just their heads but their hearts, for
in trying to be kind to the cruel, they have been seduced by the self-serving
sirens of Islamic fundamentalists, becoming cruel to the kind. Saying America
deserved Sept. 11 is every bit as repulsive as saying a rape victim "asked
for it." It's tough enough to be a sane liberal as it is these days; I
think I speak for many in hoping not to have to be a recovering liberal.
