The Enemy At Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11

Whenever Muslims charge that the war on terror is really a war against Islam, Americans hasten to assure them they are wrong. Yet as Dinesh D’Souza argues in this powerful and timely polemic, these Muslim critics of America are right--there really is a war against Islam. Only this war is not being waged by Christian conservatives bent on a moral crusade to impose democracy abroad, as many liberals maintain, but by the American cultural left, which has for years been vigorously exporting its domestic war against religion and traditional morality to the rest of the world.

By the “cultural left” D’Souza does not mean all liberals or even all Democrats, but the militant secularists, feminists and gay activists who make up the left wing of the Democratic party, along with their allies in Hollywood, the academy, the antiwar movement, and the human rights establishment. D’Souza contends that the cultural left is responsible for 9/11 in two ways: by fostering a decadent and depraved American culture that angers and repulses other societies--especially traditional and religious ones; and by promoting, at home and abroad, an anti-American attitude that blames America for all the problems of the world.

Why did 9/11 occur? D’Souza traces the roots to the Khomeini revolution, the first regime to target America as the Great Satan. He documents the role of the Carter administration and its left-wing allies in displacing the Shah and consolidating Khomeini’s rule. D’Souza also shows that after the Cold War the radical Muslims were fighting to overthrow their local governments, what they termed the “near enemy.” But then Bin Laden and others got the idea that perhaps the United States—the “far enemy”—was even more vulnerable than the near enemy. Starting in the mid-1990s, Islamic radicals tested their theory of American weakness by launching a series of strikes against American targets, such as the Khobar Tower facility in Saudi Arabia, the two U.S. embassies in Africa, and the U.S.S. Cole. During this period the Clinton administration was focused on its own political and

D’Souza shows that Islamic anti-Americanism is not merely a reaction to U.S. foreign policy but is also rooted in a revulsion against what Muslims perceive to be the atheism and moral depravity of American popular culture. “They don’t hate us for our freedom,” D’Souza writes, “They hate us for how we use our freedom.” Muslims and other traditional people around the world allege that American values are being imposed on their societies, and these values undermine religious belief, weaken the traditional family, and corrupt the innocence of children. Muslim fears are largely justified, but it is not “America” that is doing this to them, it is the cultural left. What traditional societies consider repulsive and immoral, the cultural left considers progressive and liberating.

Taking issue with those on the right who speak of a “clash of civilizations,” D’Souza argues that the war on terror is really a war for the hearts and minds of traditional Muslims—and traditional peoples everywhere. The only way to win the struggle with radical Islam is to convince traditional Muslims that America is on their side. To prove this the U.S. must allow Muslim countries to defend Muslim interests and live according to their own moral precepts. Moreover, America’s leaders must contest the notion that liberal depravity equals American depravity. If America were to proclaim itself a Judeo-Christian society and stand up for the principles of traditional morality worldwide, this would greatly weaken the threat posed by radical Islam.

We are accustomed to thinking of the war on terror and the culture war as two distinct and separate struggles. D’Souza shows that they are really one and the same. Conservatives must recognize that the left is now allied with the Islamic radicals in a combined effort to defeat Bush’s war on terror. So Bush and the right are fighting not only a war against radical Islam, but also a political “war against the war” in America. A whole new strategy is needed to fight both wars. “In order to defeat the Islamic radicals abroad,” D’Souza writes, “we must defeat the enemy at home.”