Dan over at Winds of Change cites me in his latest piece, "The Al-Qaeda Rebuttal to Bush's State of the Union." Writing on al-Zawahiri's statement on "Western" freedom, he writes:
Unfortunately, I don't think he goes far enough in explaining what exactly it is that al-Zawahiri is rejecting here. While he enumerates the traditional litany of American atrocities against the rest of the world (the use of nuclear weapons against Japan, a reference to the US rendition policy, supporting Arab dictators like Hosni Mubarak, supporting Israel in its alleged goal of destroying the al-Aqsa Mosque, human rights abuses at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib), the earlier part of his statement could also be read alongside Pat Buchanan's most recent column...
I guess it could, since a lot of the grievances are similar, especially dealing with secularization and moral decadence. But let's look at the al-Zawahiri passage that Dan quotes immediately preceding Buchanan:
"The freedom that we want is not the freedom of interest-bearing banks and vast corporations and misleading mass media; not the freedom of the destruction of others for the sake of materialistic interests; and not the freedom of AIDS and an industry of obscenities and homosexual marriages; and not the freedom to use women as a commodity to gain clients, win deals, or attract tourists; not the freedom of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; and not the freedom of trading in the apparatus of torture and supporting the regimes of oppression and Copts and suppression, the friends of America; and not the freedom of Israel, with their annihilation of the Muslims and destruction of the Aqsa mosque; and not the freedom of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib."
I think that the bolded passage is the only part where Buchanan can be said to agree with al-Zawahiri. Then again, most Americans, I dare say, do not approve of pornography and, according to polls (and judging by 13 state referenda), it seems that a great deal, if not a majority, of Americans dissaprove of same-sex marriage. The important difference is that no one is using violence to end pornography and stop same-sex marriage in America. And, of course, that the majority of Americans don't agree with the rest of al-Zawahiri's statement.
Also, there is the very important fact that Pat Buchanan remains a Roman Catholic--his depressing pessimism notwithstanding. I don't think al-Zawahiri would approve of that. As far as he's concerned, Buchanan is just a Roman Copt.
Again: the defeatism and the fatalism is what gets me. None of this is constructive. Why not read something like The Universal Hunger for Liberty or The Case for Democracy? At least those books give one hope.
Unfortunately, I don't think he goes far enough in explaining what exactly it is that al-Zawahiri is rejecting here. While he enumerates the traditional litany of American atrocities against the rest of the world (the use of nuclear weapons against Japan, a reference to the US rendition policy, supporting Arab dictators like Hosni Mubarak, supporting Israel in its alleged goal of destroying the al-Aqsa Mosque, human rights abuses at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib), the earlier part of his statement could also be read alongside Pat Buchanan's most recent column...
I guess it could, since a lot of the grievances are similar, especially dealing with secularization and moral decadence. But let's look at the al-Zawahiri passage that Dan quotes immediately preceding Buchanan:
"The freedom that we want is not the freedom of interest-bearing banks and vast corporations and misleading mass media; not the freedom of the destruction of others for the sake of materialistic interests; and not the freedom of AIDS and an industry of obscenities and homosexual marriages; and not the freedom to use women as a commodity to gain clients, win deals, or attract tourists; not the freedom of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; and not the freedom of trading in the apparatus of torture and supporting the regimes of oppression and Copts and suppression, the friends of America; and not the freedom of Israel, with their annihilation of the Muslims and destruction of the Aqsa mosque; and not the freedom of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib."
I think that the bolded passage is the only part where Buchanan can be said to agree with al-Zawahiri. Then again, most Americans, I dare say, do not approve of pornography and, according to polls (and judging by 13 state referenda), it seems that a great deal, if not a majority, of Americans dissaprove of same-sex marriage. The important difference is that no one is using violence to end pornography and stop same-sex marriage in America. And, of course, that the majority of Americans don't agree with the rest of al-Zawahiri's statement.
Also, there is the very important fact that Pat Buchanan remains a Roman Catholic--his depressing pessimism notwithstanding. I don't think al-Zawahiri would approve of that. As far as he's concerned, Buchanan is just a Roman Copt.
Again: the defeatism and the fatalism is what gets me. None of this is constructive. Why not read something like The Universal Hunger for Liberty or The Case for Democracy? At least those books give one hope.
