[npc] Let's Fight

["Dennis Moore" <clayboy56>]

although somewhat soothed yesterday by the interview w/ Yusuf, it has
pretty much been undone by the tone in the thread I started. I wish I
knew where all this moral certainty comes from....

Especially when seeing something like this:

Today's Review From Esquire

The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11
by  Dinesh D'souza

Death to America
	A review by Mark Warren

Dear Dinesh,

Just read your new book, The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its
Responsibility for 9/11. Here's your blurb -- I think it works:
"Dinesh D'Souza does for liberals what The Protocols of the Elders of
Zion did for the Jews!" Put that one up high, D, because with your
crowd, that's going to move some serious books. And you're going to
need the help, my friend, what with being hospitalized for what would
have been your book tour. Come on, Dinesh, let's fight.

That you have provoked violence from a lowly American such as myself
(read: one lacking the sinecure of an endowed chair at the Hoover
Institution, whatever that may be) should not come as a surprise to
you, old girl, when you say in your spicy little tract that "without
the cultural left" -- again, whatever that is -- "9/11 would not have
happened," and that if only we had been more like the "traditional
culture" maniacs who attacked us -- if only we stoned homosexuals to
death, for instance, or enslaved our women, and didn't brook so much
dissent or speak so freely or have so much sex -- then maybe we
wouldn't have provoked their violence. Yessir, in the course of your
tortured logic, in this utterly incoherent book, you do end up
justifying their violence against our open society, an open society
that you seem clearly to despise.

Here's the thing, D: We knew how much they hated America. We just
didn't have a full grasp, until now, of how much you and your crazy
cohort hate America. Because you have taken to heart the "Islamic
critique of Western moral depravity," as you call it, and have come
down on their side of things. You actually seek to blame your
free-speaking moral inferiors here in America for giving bin Laden no
choice but to kill us. And in nothing short of derangement, you
imagine a "de facto alliance" between the American "cultural left" and
Islamic fundamentalism. You blame Michael Moore, for instance, for
establishing the atmosphere that made 9/11 possible. But Dinesh, every
good foot soldier of the cultural left knows that Michael Moore wasn't
really made el jefe of the movement until the release of Fahrenheit
9/11 in 2004, which was, you know, after 9/11. So what cues was bin
Laden taking from Michael Moore? His caustic view of corporate
detachment in Roger & Me? His zany John Candy vehicle Canadian Bacon?
Are you crazy? Or are you just looking for a little of that Coulter
cash?

Your unbearably prim, dishonest little book searches for culpability
for 9/11 everywhere except where it actually lies. In 1998, bin Laden
himself told American journalist John Miller that it was the American
military presence on the Arabian Peninsula that was driving him
batshit crazy and that he intended to do something about it. Something
specific. He told Miller he was going to "bring the fight to America"
("Greetings, America. My Name Is Osama bin Laden," Esquire, February
1999). But there you sit at the Hoover Institution, looking for the
bogeyman. I've got news for you, D. As President Bush says, We're
right, they're wrong.

Dinesh, my wife and I live in Manhattan. This is our home. This is
where we are raising our children. We were here on September 11, 2001.
We had the taste of ash in our mouths, and we were so angry, we wanted
to kill somebody. The enemy felt close at hand that day. Today, after
reading your despicable book, the enemy again feels close at hand. And
the enemy is you.

So come on, Dinesh, don't just stand there on the mass grave in lower
Manhattan and spew your astringent hate at your own countrymen and
-women. Defend your ideas with your blood. To be clear: Let's fight.
You know where to find me. I'm in the book.

Read the review online at:
http://www.powells.com/esq/review/2006_12_20