Although the proposition that organized international terrorism does not exist may seem funny, many writers on the Left seriously believe that terrorism is a derivative phenomenon with no independent existence of its own. It is simply a reaction to Western, and particularly American oppression. It is the shadow, as it were, of the USA, which would cease to exist once the solid being that gave rise to it vanished. According to this point of view, it is entirely correct to refer to terrorists as 'insurgents', 'resistants', 'militants' or even 'freedom fighters', because they have no actual violent goals arising from their consciousness except as are suggested to them by their oppressor; entirely correct refer to them as 'phantoms' because they do not exist of themselves, except as emergent phenomenon in relation to the United States.
Thomas Joscelyn spends two whole pages in the Weekly Standard article The Four-Day War reminding us that after President Clinton launched Operation Desert Fox in 1999 to prevent Saddam Hussein from acquiring Weapons of Mass Destruction the press widely reported that Hussein had turned to Osama Bin Laden to exact revenge on the United States.
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Recalling the recent past inconveniently undermines the thesis that an "organised terrorist network is an illusion". It is data that would be swept out of sight without the vigilance of writers like Joscelyn. (And it didn't used to be hard, at least in the days before the Internet. One Soviet historian working in the days of Stalin complained of the difficulty of his task because "You never know what's going to happen yesterday".) It would then be harder to deny the existence to an international terrorist network with actual goals of its own, with a will to power of its own, acting in the world today. Then we might have to conclude that the skein running through today's headlines is terrorism; that it is warring on us and that we might have to return the favor.
The Left calls international terrorism an "illusion." I call the the views of the Left "delusional". Thier illusion is a concoction of wishful thinking, projection, and outright denial of reality.
What we see in the delusion that "terrorism does not exist", is a desperate attempt by the Left to explain-- in terms they can understand, their own fall from power and influence in the world. They would rather believe this illusional "nightmare enemy gives so many groups new power and influence in a cynical age - and not just politicians"; rather than to deal with the fact that they no longer have the power and influence they once had, prefering to believe that it has been stolen away from them by vague conspiratorial forces.
Additiionally, they unknowingly demonstrate the typical cold grandiosity and arrogance of the true paranoid, by asserting that their own superior intellect allows them to see beyond the obvious facts that we mere mortals must deal with.
Although I don't know what's going to happen yesterday, I have a fairly good idea of what will happen in the near future: I will get dozens of angry emails regarding this pst--all people claiming that by pointing out this behavior that I am the one who is coldly arrogant and grandiose; and that I am delusional.
Further projection and paranoia are fairly common when one attempts to confront delusion. The confronter almost always becomes incorporated into the delusional "plot" in the eyes of the paranoid (that is why so many on the Left accuse Right-leaning bloggers of being "paid off" by the Republicans or that they are merely regurgitating the "talking points" of thw Administration--as if we don't have independent thinking faculties that have logically brought us to the same conclusions).
If I were dealing with a patient, I wouldn't bother to confront him so directly, as it doesn't work very often in inducing them to change. The stakes are too high because their sense of Self is on the line. And for those on the extreme end, that identity would shatter into a million pieces without the glue of delusional fantasies.
But we are not dealing with a single patient. We are dealing with a delusional group whose committment to the group delusion varies. No, it is with the hope that there are some Democrats and others on the Left who still retain enough rational capability; and who are not inextricably tied to the failed ideologies of the 20th century--whose adherents are desperately attempting to regain the power and influence they accuse others of stealing from them--it is with the hope of reaching them, that I bother to write about these issues at all.
As much as the Left would like us to believe that "terrorism" doesn't exist, the objective proof exists in the world around us; and anyone who opens their eyes can see it. Just as they would like us to believe that the U.S. is "responsible" for something that doesn't exist in the first place; the refutation of that is the historical record that anyone can investigate (and which one often must investigate for one's self, since history is constantly being distorted in our news media at the moment).
So, to them I say: open your eyes. Check the facts. Check the history. Go back and read what was said then versus what is being said now.
I dare you.
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