Distort D'Newsa (Dinesh D'Souza), whining about attacks on him and his not thought through book

[ck4829]

"Contrary to the common liberal view, I don't believe that the 9/11 attacks were payback for U.S. foreign policy. Bin Laden isn't upset because there are U.S. troops in Mecca, as liberals are fond of saying. (There are no U.S. troops in Mecca.) He isn't upset because Washington is allied with despotic regimes in the region. Israel aside, what other regimes are there in the Middle East? It isn't all about Israel. (Why hasn't al-Qaeda launched a single attack against Israel?) The thrust of the radical Muslim critique of America is that Islam is under attack from the global forces of atheism and immorality -- and that the United States is leading that attack.

Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Leftists, Blah, Blah, Democrat Party, Blah, Blah, Blah, Jerry Falwell, Blah, Blah, Blah, ACLU.

When I began writing my new book, this concern was largely theoretical, because the left was outside the corridors of power. Now I fear that the extreme cultural left is whispering into the ears of the Democratic Congress. Cut off the funding. Block the increase in troops. Shut down Guantanamo Bay. Lose the war on terrorism -- and blame Bush."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/26/AR2007012601624_2.html?sub=AR

Mr. D'Newsa can put it in any way he wants, what he said in his book is that the way to beat Al Qaeda is by becoming Socially Conservative Puritans, have laws which make health care that focuses on Women declared to be witchcraft and throw GLBT people in prison for the rest of their lives and they'll be lucky if we do not execute them for their supposed grave crime against humanity. How convenient is that the way to beat Al Qaeda is by becoming the very thing which the Social Conservatives want us to become, eh?

According to him, we have to change our ways to provide comfort for them and maybe they won't hate us anymore.

Is this not appeasing the terrorists?

[Solon]

1. Stephen Colbert ripped him to shreds on his show, it was kickass to watch...

He actually got D'Souza to AGREE with some of Bin Laden's more outrageous comments. It was great!

[fishwax]

3. yeah, that was brutal

great work by Colbert. What a mismatch :rofl:

[fasttense]

2. Please stop hating us and we'll conform to your ideology.

That is the gist of his book. And oh it's not the RW idiots who are dropping bombs on Muslims that is making them angry, it is liberals wanting women to vote that is pissing them off. Go figure.

[nam78_two]

4. I cannot believe this loser gets to whine on the oped pages

of so many respected newspapers :eyes:. He was dithering on about something in the pages of the LaTimes last week.

I can't stand the guy. Thank god he didn't end up marrying Ann Coulter-their demon spawn would have taken over the world...

[donco6]

5. I.e., let's adopt Sharia law and all will be well.

No?

[BOSSHOG]

6. The irony of it all

The whiner wants everyone to believe what he believes, and whines when he discovers they don't. If everyone believes they way he does what would be the point in the book? Its similar to right wing hate radio and books by the likes of ann coulter. People listen and hear, not to be educated or to get information, only to inflame their already twisted version of life and right and wrong, good and bad. "Conservatives" whine so much about the evil of our freedoms and yet hang around to suck on the tit of liberty 24/7. Imagine my surprise.

[0rganism]

7. Listened to Thom Hartmann dismantle him, and it struck me that he & Bin Laden are much alike

Summarizing some points, from a latter part of the "interview" (more of an argument),
Hartmann: OBL is pissed at the USA because there were American troops on Saudi soil
D'Loser: No, he's pissed because those troops desecrate Saudi Arabia with their secular liberal ways
Hartmann: They should not have been deployed in SA to defend Kuwait & big oil
D'Loser: Yes they should, since SA invited them to be there and we have a national interest

OK, I think they're both kind of right on the underlying causes, but Thom missed his opportunity to burn D'Loser in a big way.

1. Hartmann is right about the holy land deployment (which Bush jr. eventually relocated to Iraq)
2. D'Loser is right about why that deployment is offensive to fanatics like OBL

Where D'Loser is weak and where Hartmann missed his chance to cut him off at the knees is that OBL's position is essentially the same as D'Loser's, and equally unreasonable. While there is some disagreement over the precise ordering of OBL's reasons for the terrorism of 9/11/2001, I have NEVER heard OBL's reasons defended (by anyone I respect, anyway) as eminently reasonable.

D'Loser tries to place the blame for anti-Western terrorism on secular/liberal American culture.
Hartmann tries to place the blame on American foreign policy and pro-monarchy interventions in favor of conservative economic policies and croneyism.

IMHO, they're both missing the mark: the blame for organized terrorism of any stripe rests primarily on the head of those religious or nationalist fanatics who promote violence, lawlessness, and the spread of fundamentalism as a solution to their complaints. Terrorism is NOT legitimate, and while OBL's rationalizations of his outrageous behavior may be valid causally, they are NOT valid morally. Even if D'Loser is correct about OBL's primary objection to American military deployment in Saudi Arabia being our (questionable) secularism -- and it may well be so -- there is no reason to credit OBL's methods with any sort of legitimacy.

D'Loser trying to fob off responsibility for terrorism onto the secular/liberals is pretty much analogous to excusing a rapist by saying, "She was asking for it by wearing a red dress." Yes, we should be able to defend our allies and honor our treaties by appropriate deployments, and those deployments should be for bettter reasons than preserving monarchies or ensuring oil profits, but that's not the real issue at hand. If someone expects our troops to suddenly become sharia-loving muslims during said deployment, that's really a problem with expectations, not the troops per se. Both Thom and D'Loser missed this crucial point.