The return of the fantasists

Carolyn Glick:

As the cliché goes, "A conservative is a liberal whose been mugged by reality." Like most clichés, this one exposes a larger truth. Namely, people often base their views on their fantasies of how the world should be, rather than on the reality of how the world actually is.

Following this line, the September 11, 2001 attacks can be seen as a large-scale mugging. After the attacks, the same American people that had ignored the threat of totalitarian Islam since the Iranian revolution first categorized the US as the Great Satan back in 1979, acknowledged the danger and recognized it was at war. The overwhelming majority of Americans supported President George W. Bush when he said that the US would fight to destroy all global terror organizations and take down the regimes that sponsor them.

But even before the fires were put out in Lower Manhattan, voices from two quarters were already claiming that the US should stay in Dreamland. First, there were the radical leftists like Susan Sontag and Michael Moore who wrapped themselves in the banner of the human rights of the wretched of the Earth. They claimed that al-Qaida was simply giving Americans their comeuppance for dominating the world through McDonalds and Levis.

Next there were people like former presidents Carter and Bush's national security advisers Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft, assorted university professors, and CIA analysts who wrapped themselves in the banner of realism. They claimed that American support for Israel is what brought the Islamic world to hate the country and kill thousands of its citizens by flying hijacked airplanes into buildings.

In both cases, the fantasists ignored completely Osama bin Laden's declarations that his goal is to conquer the world in the name of Islam. They disregarded the political and cultural milieus marked by inexhaustible envy towards the West and the US that gave rise to al-Qaida and its sister organizations. Rather than acknowledge the reality of real war with real enemies, both camps of fantasists argued that instead of slaying these twin dragons, the US should appease them by serving them Israel for lunch.

These voices were relegated to the margins of public debate until the lead up to the 2004 presidential elections. Ahead of those elections, backed by George Soros's financial muscle, the fantasists had an enormous impact of the debate in the Democratic Party. Politicians who until then had supported the war generally, and in Iraq particularly, clamored to decry it.

THIS WEEK, two leftist institutions - the Center for American Progress and Foreign Policy magazine - published a survey of conservative, moderate and liberal foreign policy experts. The results of the survey show clearly that while still a minority, the fantasists are far from marginal today.

Fourteen percent of those surveyed believe that Israel is the US's least helpful ally. While unfortunate, this is far from the survey's most troubling result.

The Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group's report, which was released last December, recommended that the administration sell Israel off in order to buy Iranian, Syrian and Saudi cooperation in Iraq that could pave the way to an orderly American retreat from the country. Uber fantasists James Baker and Lee Hamilton asserted that if the US forces Israel to surrender the Golan Heights to Syria and Judea, Samaria, and Jerusalem to the Palestinians, all will be well with Iraq. Eighty-eight percent of the foreign policy experts surveyed agreed with them.

Fifty-three percent of the experts (38% of the conservatives, 59% of the moderates and 59% of the liberals) believe that the US should recognize Hamas. Forty-seven percent (29% of the conservatives, 49% of the moderates and 61% of the liberals) believe that the US should recognize Hizbullah.

As for Iran, 68 percent of the survey's participants think that the Iranian threat can be contained through negotiations. Only 10 percent think that the US should attack Iran's nuclear facilities. Indeed, a significant minority is of the opinion that the world stands to benefit from a nuclear-armed Iran. A quarter of the conservatives, 29% of the moderates and 41% of the liberal experts claimed that Iran will behave more responsibly if it acquires nuclear capabilities. Only 32 percent think that Iran will attack Israel with nuclear bombs. Only 24 percent think it likely that Iran would transfer nuclear devices to terrorists.

A BRIEF look at recent statements by Iran's leaders and its terrorist vassals suffice to show how cut off these views are from reality. Last Saturday, Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei said, "America and its followers are stuck in a whirlpool and they sink deeper as time passes. A dangerous future is predicted for them." Wednesday Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad signaled that Iran will share its nuclear know-how with others saying, "If nuclear energy is something good, all nations should enjoy it on the basis of law."

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The wise course should be to take these people at their word and treat them accordingly. Living in an alternate universe of wishful thinking will not deter them from their stated objectives. These religious bigots cannot negotiate a compromise, because to do so would compromise their faith. they therefore use negotiations as bad faith devices for buying time to plan their attacks. We are giving them a gift of time to plan our destruction by negotiating with them.