Studies, Analysis & Opinions
By Ben Johnson
THE TROUBLE WITH THE LEFTISTS’ VIEW OF THE WAR ON TERRORISM IS NOT MERELY THAT THEY BELIEVE LIES, as we have so frequently and so recently proven they do. The problem is they believe so many lies, errors so ahistorical and counterfactual as to represent an unreality. The leftist’s myths, intricately layered and mutually reinforcing, bond in such a way as to enclose their adherent within an ideologically driven mania. Subject to imprecision or exaggeration, and folded within the subtext that the United States has always been an oppressive nation, this fervor constitutes, not so much an alternate history as a fairy tale: a simplistic morality yarn for children that carefully tailors its narrative to vindicate its own premises.
In simple terms, nearly everything the Left believes about the United States for the past eight years is a lie. Taken one-at-a-time, such misinformation is not necessarily corrosive. Taken as a whole, they erode a citizen’s ability to support his nation’s cause during a time of war, giving the enemy invaluable aid and comfort. Indeed, this is one of the lessons of the new book David Horowitz and I have written entitled, ....
One prevarication upon another, the Left’s contentions form an internally coherent argument that advances the enemy’s policy goal: to break Americans’ will to defend themselves, to retreat before al-Qaeda, and to give bin Laden his greatest propaganda victory since his allied dragged American bodies through the streets of Mogadishu 15 years ago.
