Osama bin Chomsky

Power Line has a great little summary of a sentiment that always occurs to me when bin Ladin or other terrorists come out with statements; How much in line with standard old Democrats much of their rhetoric is, while certain pieces of it (that apparently the left ignores) are at what one would at least think would be complete odds with the leftist Democrat views.

On the surface, "Convert to Islam" ... with the obvious effects of stoning gays, putting women under burkas and following sharia law would seem to be pretty abhorrent to lefties. However, less abhorrent than Christianity? They see Bush as their greatest enemy, so as long as Osama opposes Bush (much like Saddam in the past), they really don't see him as such a bad guy.

Direct declarations of "Iraq is the front line in the war on terror" from what most would consider our enemy while at the same time being happy with the Democrat take-over in Congress would seem to be "slightly embarrassing", but apparently not to the left. One constantly gets the feeling that Saddam, Osama, economic collapse or virtually anything else would be better at some apparently spiritual level than George Bush.

I sometimes think that the "highest good" of the left is avoidance of personal responsibility, so even a completely blood thirsty Islamic state that is totally totalitarian is better than an "opportunity society" that says you get to make up your own mind and are responsible for your own success and failure. The left must have someone else to blame for lack of success--if the state is totalitarian and your fate is not in your own hands, their form of "victory" has been achieved. The entire (short) little Power Line post is WELL worth the read.

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com Osama bin Chomsky The transcript of Osama bin Laden's newest video, in which he speaks directly to American listeners, is available here. It is intensely interesting, for a number of reasons. First, the subject matter is Iraq, almost exclusively. Bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders have said that Iraq is the main front in their global war against us. Second, the affinity between Muslim extremism and Western leftism has never been so clearly displayed. Bin Laden sounds for all the world like a Marxist. He praises Noam Chomsky as one of the "most capable" of American war opponents. Over and over, he attributes American foreign policy to "the owners of the major corporations." In bin Laden's view, "[t]hose with real power and influence are those with the most capital," and "the essence of man-made positive laws is that they serve the interests of those with capital and thus make the rich richer and the poor poorer."