Why are we losing the battle against terrorism? Because, as a column by Bill Murchison posits, terrorists out-believe us. Even the most hideous terrorist attack on American soil, the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11 are being blamed, not on the jihadist terrorists, but on America itself. Former Texas representative Ron Paul, on the 12th anniversary of 9/11 wrote on Facebook, “We’re supposed to believe that the perpetrators of 9/11 hated us for our freedom and goodness. In fact, that crime was blowback for decades of US intervention in the Middle East.” Blame the victim, Mr. Paul. Rape victims have understood that argument for decades!
But Mr. Paul is not the only one to voice this opinion. In 2015 a freshman level course was offered in a number of colleges including the University of Maryland and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill called “The Literature of 9/11.” But the literature of 9/11 in that course is a compilation of writings from terrorists and Guantanamo Bay detainees. The UNC College Republicans wrote in a letter to Chancellor Carol Folt:
“There is not a single reading required that focuses on the lives of the victims, the victim’s [sic] families, American soldiers (or) families of American soldiers,” they continued. “Nor is there a perspective that portrays the United States as acting in good faith before, during and after the Sept. 11 attacks.” The course “does not teach students how to think, it teaches them what to think,” they added. “And the material it presents is an apologetic for the violence and murder against the United States” (An Open Letter on English 72, “literature of 9/11”).
The university dismissed their complaints and the course remained.
Dr. Susan Berry wrote in September of 2016 that “Many younger progressives will take it for granted that moral people are citizens of the world, equating nationalism and patriotism with racism and fascism,” something which I have encountered myself as at least one former student. “disappointed in me” because I did not share her world view, has ceased to talk to me. These young liberals have become so convinced of the evilness of America and the need to apologize for everything we have done in the past, that these young adults can not conceive that their views might be wrong and that those of us who actually lived through some of those events in our history, might have a better understanding of them than they do.
This tide of blame the West for the evil of ISIS and other terrorists is heard all too clearly on college campuses from the largely left-leaning faculties and now in the new frameworks of the College Board which form the basis for AP materials taught in our high schools. According to Stanley Kurtz, senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. “There’s virtually nothing in the College Board’s new frameworks about the dangers of terrorism or the historical clash of European and Middle Eastern culture. The underlying message is that patriotism is bad, America and the West have been oppressors, and true history is world history.”
This is why the left constantly accuses President Trump and his followers of being fascists. They have come to believe, erroneously, that all nationalism, all patriotism equates with fascism. To believe we live in the greatest nation in the world is to deny the worth of every other nation and is therefore wrong, wrong, wrong.
Never mind the fact that we have more freedom in this country, guaranteed by our constitution, than any other country in the world.
Never mind the fact that no country in the world gives so much money to help support other countries.
Never mind the fact that no country in the world has spent so much blood and treasure to free Europe from Nazism and the East from the menace of the Japanese during WWII, to keep at least South Korea free from Communism, and to give education to girls in Afghanistan.
Never mind the fact that when other countries suffer natural disasters, the U.S. is the first country there with both aid workers and billions of dollars to support the victims.
No, in liberal doctrine, all of these simply underscore the brash arrogance of America who feels she can cure everyone’s woes.
So, little by little, many Americans have come to believe that we are the evil ones, that we should be ashamed of our past and even our present, that whatever bad thing happens to us, it must be deserved. Those of that mindset can not blame terrorist attacks on jihadism, on radical Islamic views espoused in the Quran that all infidels must be converted or killed. Instead they blame the attacks on poverty, lack of jobs for young Muslim men, Israel’s settlements on the West Bank, America’s support for Israel. Oh, yes. It can not be that a man who beheads another man on video and posts it to Facebook is simply evil. It can not be that a man who blows himself up at a concert, deliberately killing young girls is simply evil. It can not be that a man who stabs two young girls, younger than ten, in the chest because he objects to the bathing suits that they are wearing is simply evil. No, those Americans would rather blame the victims.
And that, my friends, is why we are losing the battle with terrorism. They out-believe us. They believe that we are evil. To counter them, we must believe just as strongly that we Christians, we Jews, we of the West, are good, that we are better than they are. And sadly, way too many of us no longer believe that.