What We're Fighting

The neo-theo-corpocon worldview. First, Steve Benen at TPM commenting on Melanie Morgan's response to Naomi Wolf's comments on the damage done by Bush's Iraq policy and how it reflects the worldview of right-wing radicals:

This description may sound hyperbolic, but a surprising number of high-profile conservative voices actually believe that we're this close to an invasion and the replacement of our constitutional system with a radical Muslim theocracy. If you disagree -- about the nature of Islam, or the war in Iraq, or the president's national security policies, etc. -- then you are necessarily helping advance the Islamists' drive for international hegemony.

It's precisely why Morgan, instead of responding to Wolf's substantive points, quickly leapt to her reflexive conclusion: criticizing the president will contribute to the downfall of the United States and the imposition of sharia law.

Granted, Morgan is out there even by right-wing standards (she seems to be sort of an Ann Coulter on Stoli), but Benen follows up with a post on Victor Davis Hanson's reaction to Congressional critics of the policy:

[I]t is hard to recall of any war in our history -- the Vietnam hysteria aside -- that a sitting Senate majority leader declared it lost in the middle of hostilities. We have not previously witnessed senior opposition senators alleging that their own American servicemen were analogous to Nazis, Stalinists, Cambodian mass murders, Saddam's Baathist killers, or engaging in habitual terrorizing and killing of innocent civilians.

Hanson's overstating his case, of course, but the core of it is that someone has dared to criticize the Leader's war. The flaw in Hanson's lead-in is, of course, that no other war in American history, the Vietnam debacle aside, lost support so rapidly once the truth of it became known. As far as support for Iraq goes, we're talking about an extremist position.

Josh Marshall posts a comment from a reader:

Re 'You're going to look super in a burka': I think this makes sense mainly if you consider that unilateralism is in many ways the flip side of isolationism. To an awful lot of people in places like, say, West Texas [I once lived there], the outside world is seen as a vague, threatening place, full of people who want what we've got. First it was the Nazis, then the Communists, and now the Islamists; they all blur into a single, malignant Other, who need to be stopped well short of our shores [Throw in the Trilateral Commission and the international bankers for good measure]. I recall teaching history in WTX and having to explain to a student that Nazis and Communists weren't the same people; he actually thought they were, and he was a smart guy!

Just to see the depth to which this idea permeates the right, see this piece by Roger Simon, linking support for same-sex marriage to the War on Terror. Seriously!

Because I am such an adamant adherent of gay rights, women’s rights, human rights – the values that evolved out of the Enlightenment – I have to vote for the candidate I think will best carry forth that war (by whatever means appropriate at the moment) to defend those Enlightenment values. This means, unless I am very lucky, that I will not always love that person in all areas. Indeed, I may have to swallow some very bitter pills, but these are serious times, by far the most serious of my lifetime. And I was born at the end of World War II.

I never cease to be amazed – and perhaps it is my own myopia – that my former colleagues on the Left can be blind to this situation. They act as if the threat is not real and is only a blip caused by a post 9/11 overreaction by George Bush, thus ignoring virtually all of Western history since the year 800, not to mention the overwhelming demographic changes of recent decades.

There's not a lot of reality involved in this view. I mean, get serious: the United States, not only the greatest military power in the world but a country in which every third person, it seems, owns a gun, is going to be conquered by a bunch of ragged suicide bombers who can't even afford the air fare to get here?

And people seriously believe this. The really do. See Glenn Greenwald's comments on Simon's essay. His update is particularly telling:

One way to look at the threat posed by Islamic radicalism (let us call it Option A) is to see it as the Epic War of Civilizations, the Existential Threat to Everything, the Gravest and Scariest Danger Ever Faced which is going to take over the U.S. and force us all to bow to Islam.

Another way to look at it (let us call this Option B) is to dismiss it entirely, to believe there is nothing wrong with Islamic radicalism, to think it should just be completely ignored because it poses no dangers of any kind.

There are, however, other options besides A and B. Therefore, to reject Option A is not to embrace Option B.

One would have thought that logical principle too self-evident to require pointing out, but as is typically the case when one assumes that, one is proven wrong.

It's the either/or, black/white thinking inherent in traditional Christianity, wihch has permeated Western thought systems over the past two thousand years or so and resides firmly in the mindset we're talking about. You see it in every argument advanced by what passes for "conservatives" these days, from chickenhawks to creationists. ("If this is true, then Darwinism must be wrong.") It's certainly not valid logically, as Greenwald points out, but it's also not valid intuitively -- anyone with any sense knows that a question always has more than two answers.

This all sort of pinged off of a post from Andrew Sullivan about Jose Padilla's mental state:

Also he had developed, actually, a third thing. He had developed really a tremendous identification with the goals and interests of the government... He was very angry that the civil proceedings were "unfair to the commander-in-chief," quote/unquote. And in fact, one of the things that happened that disturbed me particularly was when he saw his mother. He wanted her to contact President Bush to help him, help him out of his dilemma. He expected that the government might help him, if he was “good,” quote/unquote.

I'm going to let you compare this to a comment from John Hinderaker, also quoted by Sullivan, without following the link:

"I had the opportunity this afternoon to be part of a relatively small group who heard President Bush talk, extemporaneously, for around forty minutes. It was an absolutely riveting experience. It was the best I've ever seen him. Not only that; it may have been the best I've ever seen any politician. If I summarized what he said, it would all sound familiar: the difficult times we live in; the threat from Islamic fascism - the phrase drew an enthusiastic round of applause - the universal yearning for freedom; the need to confront evil now, with all the tools at our disposal, so that our children and grandchildren can live in a better and safer world. As he often does, the President structured his comments loosely around a tour of the Oval Office. But the digressions and interpolations were priceless."

The difference is, Padilla had been brainwashed for three years.

(Thanks to Croolks and Liars for the Simon link.)