The Enemy At Home Read Free Page B

that Bush and his supporters, not bin Laden and Al Qaeda, are the real problem. Social critic Edward Said, who spent most of his career warning of the dangers of overestimating the threat of Islamic extremism, warned in a recent book that “the vast number of Christian fanatics in the United States,” who form “the core of George Bush’s support,” now represent “a menace to the world.” Jonathan Raban writes, “The greatest military power in history has shackled its deadly hardware to the rhetoric of fundamentalist Christianity.” Writer Jane Smiley finds the people who voted for Bush to be “predatory and resentful, amoral, avaricious, and arrogant…. They are full of original sin and have a taste for violence.” Eric Alterman fumes in
The Nation
, “Extremist right-wingers enjoy a stranglehold on our political system.” Author Jonathan Schell insists that “Bush’s abuses of presidential power are the most extensive in American history.” Author Garry Wills alleges that the Bush administration “weaves together a chain of extremisms encircling the polity…forming a necklace to choke the large body of citizens.” There is no indication that these liberal authorities regard Islamic fundamentalism with anything approaching this degree of alarm. 9
    The rhetoric of left-wing political leaders is equally revealing. In examining speeches by Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and Edward Markey, I am struck by what may be called “the indignation gap”—the vastly different level of emotion that the speakers employ in treating bin Laden and his allies as opposed to Bush and his allies. At first the speaker will offer a ritual condemnation of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda: “I am no fan of Osama Bin Laden.” “We can agree that Bin Laden is not a very nice guy.” Having gotten those qualifications out of the way, the left-wing politician will spend the rest of the speech lambasting the Bush conservatives with uncontrolled belligerence and ferocity. In recent addresses Senator Kennedy denounced “the rabid reactionary religious right” and maintained that “no president in America’s history has done more damage to our country than George W. Bush.” Senator Hillary Clinton accuses the Bush White House and the Republican Congress of “systematically weakening the democratic traditions and institutions on which this country was built. They are turning back the clock on the twentieth-century. There has never been an administration…more intent upon consolidating and abusing power. It’s very hard to stop people who have no shame…who have never been acquainted with the truth.” Congressman Edward Markey darkly warned, “They wish to wipe us out.” 10
    The “us” that Markey is concerned about here is not Americans in general but specifically liberals and leftists. Here, then, is a revealing clue to the motives of the left. Many in this camp are more exercised by Bush than they are about bin Laden because, as they see it, Islamic fundamentalism threatens to impose illiberal values abroad while American fundamentalism of the Bush type threatens to impose illiberal values at home. As leading figures on the left see it, the Islamic extremists pose a danger to the freedom and lifestyle of
others,
while their American equivalents pose a danger to
us
. Thus, for the left, the enemy at home is far more consequential and frightening than the enemy abroad.
             
    I WANT TO say more about these liberal fears, but first I want to say a word about the conservative, or right-wing, understanding of 9/11. It is a common belief on the right that many Muslims—perhaps most Muslims—hate America because of a deep religious and cultural divide between our civilization and theirs. In this view, popularized by scholars such as Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington, Western civilization stands for modern values such as prosperity, freedom, and democracy, which the Muslim world rejects. In this