by Walter C. Uhler
Today, the "Currents" section of the
Philadelphia Inquirer
continued the "mental closure" by publishing an article by D'Souza
titled: "Not a clash of religions: Islamic radicals don't hate
Christianity, but godlessness." Although that title accurately captures
the thrust of D'Souza's claims, he concludes his piece by asserting:
"Secularism, not Christian fundamentalism, is responsible for producing
a blowback of Muslim rage."
Unfortunately, D'Souza's piece in the Stinky Inky is a red herring, a
straw man, written to introduce his real thesis; the one titled in the
LA Times:
"How The Left Led Us Into 9/11." He merely substitutes the word
"secularism" for "left." And the poor saps at the Stinky Inky fell for
it because:
(1) They lack a clear understanding of what actually
motivates Osama bin Laden, (2) they have a distorted sense of what
constitutes journalistic balance, (3) they continue to give much more
Op-Ed space to conservatives, even conservative hacks, than liberals,
and (4) they wanted to give D'Souza news hole in order to pimp for his
upcoming appearance in Philadelphia.
Yet, readers of Michael
F. Scheuer's work know that D'Souza is spouting nonsense. Unlike
D'Souza, who possesses virtually no expertise on this subject, Scheuer
is a recently retired CIA official with 22 years of experience. He
served as the Chief of Alec Station, the Osama bin Laden unit at the
Counterterrorist Center from 1996 to 1999, and then as Special Advisor
to the Chief of the bin Laden unit from September 2001 to November
2004.
Writing in
Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror, Scheuer blows away D'Souza's assertions with the following expert observations:
(1) Bin Laden "and thousands of other non-Afghan Muslims went there
[Afghanistan] to fight the Red Army not because the Soviets were
atheists and communists - not because of what they were or thought -
but rather because they were atheists and communists who had invaded
and occupied a Muslim land, had arbitrarily killed more than a million
Muslim men, women and children, had driven three-plus million more into
exile, and clearly sought to eradicate Islam from the country." [p. 10]
(2) "One of the greatest dangers for Americans in deciding how to
confront the Islamist threat lies in continuing to believe…that Muslims
hate and attack us for what we are and think, rather than for what we
do. The Islamic world is not so offended by our democratic system of
politics, guarantees of personal rights and civil liberties, and
separation of church and state that it is willing to wage war against
overwhelming odds in order to stop Americans from voting, speaking
freely, and praying,
OR NOT, as they wish." [Ibid] (my emphasis)
(3) "The United States is hated across the Muslim world because of
specific U.S. government policies and actions. The hatred is concrete
not abstract, martial not intellectual and will grow for the
foreseeable future." [p. 240]
Scheuer also lists six specific U.S. policies that "bin Laden repeatedly refers to as anti-Muslim:"
(1) U.S. support for Israel that keeps Palestinians in the Israelis' thrall.
(2) U.S. and other Western troops on the Arabian Peninsula.
(3) U.S. occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan
(4) U.S. support for Russia, India and China against their Muslim militants.
(5) U.S. pressure on Arab energy producers to keep oil prices low.
(6) U.S. support for apostate, corrupt, and tyrannical Muslim governments. [p. 241]
You'll quickly note that neither secularism nor the "left" make the list.
Of course, when one sees that specific U.S. policies, rather than
"secularism" or the "left," provoke Islamic blowback, then one also
quickly sees that D'Souza and the Stinky Inky do Americans a double
disservice. Not only do they they unjustly besmirch liberals or liberal
secularism (actually, secularism infects Americans of all political
stripes), they also deflect needed attention away from provocative U.S.
policies.
But, then, what more should we expect from this incompetent conservative pair?
Walter C. Uhler
is an independent scholar and freelance writer whose work has been
published in numerous publications, including The Nation, the Bulletin
of the Atomic Scientists, the Journal of Military History, the Moscow
Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. He also is President of the
Russian-American International Studies Association (RAISA).
Writings 
This is how it works: The increasingly decadent and profit-driven book publishing business, which is "more concerned with the sensational than the sensible" publishes Dinesh D'Souza's new book. (Quote is from Alan Wolfe's review in the January 21, 2007, New York Times Book Review.) The book provides conclusive evidence, not only that D'Souza is an ignoramus — although earlier evidence was already quite persuasive - but also that the Hoover Institution hires hacks, provided they are conservative extremists. 
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