Well, that is apparently the story Dinesh D'Souza is hawking in his book "The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11" and will be taking to the National Constitution Center in Philly at 6:30 p.m. next Wed, Jan. 31.
Based on his recent op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer, bin Laden is after us not because of the likes of Bush and his right-wing-nut fundies, but because of left-wing secularists like Jim Wallis. Yup, Jim Wallis:
As Jim Wallis puts it in his book God's Politics, there is a close parallel between Islam's holy war against the West and George Bush's holy war against Islamic terrorism. From this perspective, the best solution is for America to stand up for the principles of secularism and oppose both Muslim fundamentalism and Christian fundamentalism.
Got that? Jim Wallis is a bible-thumping secularist - bet you didn't know that! I sure didn't, I thought Wallis was a fervent promoter of actually applying religious morals to the real world - silly me.
(cont after the flip)
D'Souza goes on to say:
This view of the war [made up by D'Souza as it may be] is founded, however, on a superficial understanding of bin Laden's rhetoric [since we are obviously too stupid to figure it out for ourselves] declaring a religious war of civilizations. Bin Laden does speak of the world as being divided into a "region of faith" and a "region of infidelity." And at times he defines the clash as one between Muslims and the "crusaders."
But the context of bin Laden's arguments clearly shows that he is not speaking of a religious war between Islam and Christianity. [OK, let me guess, Islam and Buhdism? How about Islam and Taoism? Darn, I just can't figure it out...] In the same videotaped remarks in which he posits these conflicts, he praises Christianity. In one statement, he observes that Islam respects the prophets of Judaism, Christianity and Islam "without distinguishing among them."
As you might guess, D'Souza blathers on to postulate that it's the lack of sufficient Christianity in western civilization that is at the root of our terrorism problem. It's all our fault, us lefty secularists. What we really need is some good old down home fundy religion. What a crock (not that a proper understanding and application of Jim Wallis' Judeo-Christian morality wouldn't hurt mind you...).
The truth is of course all to obvious to those of us tutored by the best here on DKos - bin Laden and his cronies are driven by the Thomas Friedman, "The World is Flat", send in the marines to make the "Non-Integrating Gap" (US Navel War College Professor Thomas Barnett's term for the swath of sub-Sahara & Arabia/Middle East still in the 13th century) safe for American-led corporate gobalism.
And this guy gets to spout his garbage at the Constitution Center - ugh. Sounds like yet another protest opportunity - too bad I can't retire at 50 so I could spend my time doing things that matter instead of paying the mortgage (though I admit, I'd really prefer to be sitting in the easy chair reading sci-fi/fantasy - Goodkin's "Blood of the Fold" at the moment...) - in which case I'd be newly retired.... Oh well.