Plenty of conservative bloggers have noticed the resemblance between some of the rhetoric in Osama bin Laden’s latest tape, and the comments on lefty blogs in the U.S. Arianna Huffington wrote that Bush had left bin Laden “free to offer kudos to Noam Chomsky and Michael Scheuer’s Imperial Hubris, and to fret over global warming and U.S. mortgage rates.” Apparently the irony of sharing talking points with the world’s most wanted terrorist was lost on her. But Frank J suggested that Osama and the left ought to pool their resources, and AllahPundit noted that bin Laden sounds like a socialist icon. Despite the commonality of the rhetoric, some on the left are understandably very angry about the comparison. But not all, apparently. Over DailyKos, they’re wondering why people automatically dismiss Osama by saying he’s evil or crazy. Apparently, they think he’s neither crazy nor evil, or at least no more evil than say, Ronald Reagan:
bin Laden does not rail against the U.S. and other Western countries because they are “free,” because they are “modern,” because they are “Christian,” or even because they purport to be “secular” (though he asserts that Americans would be more happy if they were to adopt Islam). He rails against them because of specific U.S. (and allied) policies–military, political, and economic–that he and his followers believe harm ordinary people in the Islamic World. Bin Laden uses the imagery and vocabulary of Islam in making his points to his Arab and Islamic audience, much as George W. Bush, Joseph Lieberman, John Edwards, or Bill O’Reilly will use the imagery and vocabulary of the Judeo-Christian tradition to make points to their audiences. But bin Laden is not a raving religious fanatic. He is fundamentally a political revolutionary with a strong sense of suffered injustice, a sense which is shared by much of his audience and which he can therefore effectively manipulate for his political aims. So is Osama bin Laden truly “evil?” Most people who lost family members at the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001 would probably consider him to be evil. Was President Ronald Reagan evil? Most residents of Beirut who lost family members when the USS New Jersey rained 2,700 pound Mark 7 shells on residential neighborhoods in 1983 during the Lebanese Civil War probably considered Reagan to have been evil. Bottom line? Bin Laden is no more evil than other revolutionary leaders in other times or even than ordinary national leaders who propel their countries to war for “national honor,” or to acquire the resources of others, or even to “do good.”
It’s a lengthy piece, the essential point of which is that bin Laden’s agenda is actually the same as that of America’s… neoconservatives. The left frequently complain that it is unfairly portrayed as unpatriotic. They argue that they are just as committed to defeating our enemies in the war on terror as are Republicans. But if you can’t bring yourself to recognize it’s inherently evil to intentionally murder thousands of innocents–and to plan the murder of thousands more–your judgment does come into question. And if you can’t see a difference between what al Qaeda does and what the U.S. army does, should you be surprised if your patriotism is questioned as well?
