Stop the war against America - The Right Edge

While victory may be in sight in Afghanistan, the war at home continues. Before, the radical leftists came out against the war while most Americans were still mourning over the losses of Sept. 11. Now that the war in Afghanistan is progressing, their rhetoric is heightened to criticize no one but America.

Professor Robert Jensen of University of Texas is a perfect example. He has written that the terrorists' acts were "no more despicable than the massive acts of terrorism . that the U.S. government has committed ..." Similarly, Dr. Richard Falk at Princeton has said that the terrorist attacks occurred because "the mass of humanity . finds itself under the heels of U.S. economic, military, cultural and diplomatic power." Worse yet, Dr. George Wright of Chico State University alleges that President Bush wants to "kill innocent people," "colonize" the entire Arab world and secure "oil for the Bush family ."

Listening to them, one must wonder why they are so popular among some people. But the answer is actually simple. Just as it was easy to talk about "Fighting the Establishment" in the 1960s, it is easy today to talk about protesting "the power of oil companies" and U.S. "imperialism." In fact, it has always been harder to advocate just war than unjust peace, unity than disunity, honor over comfort and character over irresponsibility.

Their so called "fight against hatred," is, in fact, nothing more than hatred against this country, most notably American history. To them, the U.S. intervention in Latin America is equivalent to Attila the Hun's pillages. Surprisingly though, even their political forefathers respected American history. When Earl Browder, a prominent American communist, talked of the need for communism, he cited Washington and Lincoln. After all, the man even helped to run a "Party School of Jefferson."

Compared to that, the modern leftists are worse. Although they might no longer have the guts to say that communism works, the radicals hate almost all of American history including what most people would regard to be the best traditions. Instead, the left-wing exaggerates American mistakes in the past. They sing their praise to the so called, "new thinkers" such as Noam Chomsky. Yes, the same man who visited N. Vietnam through a communist invitation and said, "I believe that in the U.S. there will be some day a social revolution that will be of great significance to us and to all of mankind, and if this hope is to be proven correct, it will be in large part because the people of Vietnam have shown us the way."

Sure, extreme leftists write posters that ask for "tolerance" and "freedom of speech," but if their talk is cheap, their actions are even cheaper. In fact, they never fail to pass judgment on others. Paranoid, they put every American under a microscope to find any traces of racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. They talk of freedom of speech, while the only speech they tolerate is their own. Needless to say, expect no mercy if they perceive you to disagree. If anyone wants to mention some of the good that the U.S. did during the Cold War such as West Germany, Japan and South Korea, then they are immediately branded as "imperialists." In the end, the so called "progressives" and "revisionists" are guilty of intolerance just like Pat Robertson.

Furthermore, they must have slept through AP U.S. History if they are claiming that this war against terrorism is particularly undermining civil liberties. During the Civil War, President Lincoln suspended habeas corpus and Roosevelt in WWII decided to use military tribunals to sentence spies. But did the U.S. return to its normal practice of civil liberties after the war? Always. While the U.S. might narrow civil liberties during war time, it has never failed to respect them after the war. Consequently, before anyone balks at the thought of military tribunals, he or she needs to realize that: 1. the courts will be hearing war crimes and not civil crimes; 2. this is not unprecedented.

The only possible and unlikely case that the U.S. will not return to normal levels of civil liberties for an extended period of time is if the war on terrorism becomes indefinite. In other words, al-Qaeda has to be invincible for life to continue in a war state. But to believe that one must be either insane or Osama bin Laden himself. Only bin Laden would believe that his network is invincible even as he is being abandoned by the Taliban and hunted by the American special forces.

The extreme Leftists have no shame. But how could they? They are often too deeply isolated in their own world to know it. Many of them are products of political immaturity and absence of common sense as they protest the conspiracies or "the oil companies." For whatever reason, they lack any sense of what made this country great - love for America. Hence, the question that governs the debate of the war against terrorism should not be whether civil liberties will be undermined or whether America is an empire. Instead, the most imperative question that needs to be asked and asked again is this: Do the extreme Leftists hate this war or America?

Sources include: The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, Front Page Magazine, The Heterodoxy, The Weekly Standard.