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Dinesh D'Souza: 'The Left is Afraid of Bush' Paul Crespo A new book by respected conservative pundit and best-selling author Dinesh D'Souza argues that Islamic antipathy toward the U.S. stems from liberal values promulgated by the "cultural left" and promoted abroad. The book is "The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11." D'Souza recently spoke with NewsMax about the controversial work. NewsMax: Describe the thesis and main point of your book. How was the left's foreign policy a factor in 9/11? D'Souza: It's to show how the political and cultural left in this country bears a responsibility for the 9/11 attacks and also for undermining and opposing the war on terror. Since 9/11, the left has been saying that America is responsible for all this, and that American foreign policy has produced a "blowback" of resistance from the Islamic world. But it's not America that's to blame, it's the policies and ideas of the left. Their ideas, their America, has produced the blowback. So they should be pointing the finger at themselves. It all began with the Carter administration's help in getting radical Islam's clutches on a major state in Iran, by undermining the shah. President Clinton's inaction in responding to radical Muslim attacks emboldened Osama bin Laden to strike on 9/11. And now the left opposes the war on terror, essentially allying with the radicals. The reason is not that leftists don't understand how illiberal the Islamic radicals are – the reason is that the left is more afraid of President Bush and the conservative Christians at home than it is of bin Laden and the Islamic radicals abroad. NewsMax: It seems the genesis of this book began with another of your books, "What's So Great About America," which you wrote shortly after 9/11.
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D'Souza: That book reflects the unique mood of national unity after 9/11 and was intended to pull the American tribe together and make the case for a rational patriotism against a common threat. But if you read between the lines, you could begin to see what's not so great about America, too, since I also faced the critique of America head-on. Back then, I interpreted very generously the motives of the left. But we're in a very different political climate now. Realistically, Bush now is fighting two wars: one over there, and a political war with the left over here, and I'm more concerned about the political war here, because the most likely way to lose the war in Iraq is to lose the war for the American mind. NewsMax: You argue that conservatives here and traditional moderate Muslims are up against the same far-left enemy. Don't you run the risk of defending or apologizing for the repressive and flawed aspects apparent even in "moderate" Islam? D'Souza: In foreign policy you have to choose from what's there. One of the common historical mistakes we've made, and Bush is making, too, has been to search for liberals in the Muslim world to ally with. The problem is that there aren't very many liberals in the Muslim world. In a fight like this it's foolish to try to find a group that has no political influence to make an alliance with. The Muslim world is divided between traditional Muslims, who are socially conservative, and the Islamic radicals who are distinguished by the fact that they want to kill us. Traditional Muslims do espouse some things we reject, but they are right to protest the global degeneracy being promoted by the European and American left. So as conservatives we do have some common political ground with them. This will help to drive a wedge between traditional and radical Islam, which is the only long-term formula for winning the war on terror. What's the alternative? For conservatives to declare Islam as the problem and to fight the 1 billion people of the Muslim world abroad, in addition to the left at home? This is foolishness.
NewsMax: Doesn't your attempt to find common cause between traditional Christians and traditional Muslims support the left's argument that religious "fundamentalists" on both sides are the real cause of this terror war? D'Souza: Actually, it is the left that is allied with the radical Muslims. The Islamic radicals supply the terror, and the left uses that to demoralize the American people to persuade them to "cut and run" from Iraq and from the Middle East. My point is that conservatives should counter this by building alliances with the traditional Muslims, who are the majority in the Islamic world. Look, we don't support polygamy, the veil, or the patriarchal family, but this is all standard fare in the traditional cultures of the world, not just the Islamic world but much of Asia and Africa as well. While traditional Muslims are conservative on social issues, studies show that they are overwhelmingly pro-democracy. Many of them will be more pro-American, and stay away from the bin Laden camp, if they see us as permitting Muslims to live in Islamic societies and to stand up for Muslim interests. NewsMax: You note that many Muslims see the United Nations and other international organizations as tools of America, pushing a secular agenda even when these agencies often don't represent us. Why is that? D'Souza: The United Nations, and many of the other international agencies that have mostly been abandoned by the right, have been taken over and staffed by leftist Americans and Europeans pushing a secular, anti-religious agenda worldwide. When Muslims see groups such as Amnesty International undermining traditional Muslim norms in the name of "human rights," and other groups filing lawsuits everywhere to change social legislation, they see America doing this. Many Muslims see that the secular left has been successful in emasculating Christianity in the United States, and virtually eliminating it in Europe, and believe that it's now trying to do the same to Islam. In this perception, of course, they're completely right. NewsMax: Are you making some of the same arguments Jerry Falwell made after 9/11, when he blamed the attacks on America's immorality? D'Souza: No, Falwell was making a theological point, that God is punishing America for its sins by giving us 9/11. That's not my point at all. I'm asking a secular question: Why did the people who did 9/11 do it? It's not because of U.S. troops in Mecca -- there are no U.S troops in Mecca – and it's not because "they hate us for our freedom," as Bush once said. Actually, they hate us for how we use our freedom. And they see America as imposing its perverted culture, its sexual freedom, its extreme version of separation of church and state, on the rest of the world. But of course it's not America that is promoting all this, it is the cultural left. So it is the cultural left's view of America – a kind of Gomorrah on a hill – and its efforts to promote those values abroad that is the main source of anti-Americanism in the Muslim world.
Editor's note:
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