Strike The Root: Oh, <i>that's</i> what we're fighting for!

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September 22, 2003

Oh, that's what we're fighting for!

In a recent roundtable discussion of foreign policy and libertarianism at Reason magazine’s website, (ex?) leftist and Iraq hawk Christopher Hitchens said:

"It is plain to anyone that John Ashcroft is too doltish to hold the office of attorney general in war or peace, is illiterate as regards the Constitution, and despises the idea of church-state separation for which, in part, we are supposed to be fighting."

This statement struck me as odd, and not because I have a particularly high opinion of John Ashcroft....

No, what seemed strange to me was Hitchens’ claim that the idea of church-state separation is somehow integral to the war on terrorism of which he has been such a staunch supporter.

The idea here seems to be that Our Way of Life is inherently threatened by the mere existence of Islamic theocracies. But it seems to me that church-state separation in America is only threatened by Islamist terrorists if one assumes that it’s likely (or at least possible) that fanatical Muslim fundamentalists will succeed in conquering the U.S. and subjecting it to something like Taliban-style rule. Not only does this seem unlikely (to say the least), it’s not even clear that this is the goal of the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11.

The goal of the terrorists, so far as one can tell, seems to be to drive the U.S. out of the Middle East. No less an authority than Osama bin Laden has openly stated this as his objective, and the murder of American citizens seems calculated to serve this end. Specifically, he objects to the U.S. alliance with the government of Saudi Arabia and our troop presence there. Nothing that I’ve seen indicates that the conquest of the U.S. is even among his goals.

Hitchens seems to want to enlist us all in a war to spread secularism, tolerance, pluralism and the rest of the progressive litany. But it seems to me that terrorists don't threaten our cherished ideals, so much as our lives. That is, as long as the U.S. continues to meddle in the affairs of foreigners (and then import large numbers of them).

Posted by Lee McCracken at September 22, 2003 12:28 PM

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