D'Souza footnotes
In his devastating NRO column today, Victor Davis Hanson writes of the conservative response to D'Souza's book:
[I]t is the singular achievement of D’Souza that his bizarre writ has for a moment earned universal condemnation from those who can agree on little else. But that rare consensus represents not a "closing of the conservative mind" so much as it reflects the moral vileness of much of what D’Souza writes.That certainly captures my reaction to the book. This week the estimable Daniel Pipes reacted similarly to a few sentences of the book that D'Souza recylced for use in his Dartmouth Alumni Magazine cover story on our errors (according to D'Souza) in fighting the war against radical Islam. Pipes titled his post on the passage "Dinesh D'Souza walks on the dark side." In correspondence following the post, Pipes noted that D'Souza refers to himself as "[h]aving grown up in a country, India, that has 200 million Muslims[.]" Pipes writes: "130 million is the usual figure. He can't even get this right, even when he's using it to pull rank! Pathetic."
In responding to my New Criterion essay in his NRO series this week, D'Souza situates me at an undisclosed Midwestern location where I am "writing from a vast abyss of ignorance." Discussing his NRO series on his AOL blog, D'Souza congratulates himself for having risen above the temptation to respond in his NRO series with personal abuse of his critics. He writes:
In my first draft I responded to these critics in the combative mode of their original attacks. But on second thought I realize that, whatever our differences and whatever the animus they have directed against me, it's better to respond calmly and substantively, not only because this is the honorable way to conduct an argument, but also because ultimately we are on the same side. So the final version of my piece appears sans ad hominem, denying you the chance to laugh out loud but attempting to maintain a high tone.Don't despair! If you put D'Souza's NRO series beside D'Souza's description of it at as high toned and lacking in personal abuse, you will be afforded a full dose of the hilarity to which you are entitled.
D'Souza imputes ignorance to me in part because I am supposedly unaware of Osama bin Laden's own statements. In part two of his NRO series he writes:
Powerline’s Scott Johnson informs his readers that my book "shows no familiarity with important accounts of the evolution of al Qaeda such as Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon’s Age of Sacred Terror, Richard Miniter’s Losing Bin Laden, and most recently Lawrence Wright’s Looming Tower." It takes a Midwestern lawyer who blogs in his spare time to cite three semi-popular books of varying quality, but not a single scholarly work, in order to establish the real motives of bin Laden and the 9/11 conspirators.In my New Criterion essay and in my contribution to the NRO symposium today, I quote bin Laden's own statements to dispute D'Souza's account of bin Laden's motives. According to D'Souza, the weakness of liberal foreign policy fostered Islamic radicalism, but Ronald Reagan is exempt from such blame. One of the key documents on this point is bin Laden's 1996 declaration of war. In it bin Laden includes Reagan along with Clinton among those American leaders whose actions have encouraged him:***
[W]hy not rely on bin Laden’s own statements (recently collected in a book edited by Bruce Lawrence), or read Zawahiri’s own Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner?
Few days ago the news agencies had reported that the Defence Secretary of the Crusading Americans had said that "the explosion at Riyadh and Al-Khobar had taught him one lesson: that is not to withdraw when attacked by coward terrorists."Now it seems to me that one of two alternatives is possible. Either D'Souza was aware of this passage and chose to conceal it from his readers, trusting that few would have read bin Laden's virtually unreadable 30-page declaration. Or despite his pretense of great expertise, D'Souza was unaware of it because he has never read an unabridged version of the declaration.We say to the Defence Secretary that his talk can induce a grieving mother to laughter! and shows the fears that had enshrined you all. Where was this false courage of yours when the explosion in Beirut took place on 1983 AD (1403 A.H). You were turned into scattered bits and pieces at that time; 241 mainly marines solders were killed.
I'm not sure which alternative is more damning, but is it possible that the latter is the case? After all, D'Souza cites Bruce Lawrence's compilation of bin Laden's statements in his response. But Lawrence's book -- not unreasonably -- includes only a severely edited version of bin Laden's 1996 declaration of war. The abridged version of bin Laden's 1996 declaration that is included in the Lawrence book cited by D'Souza doesn't include bin Laden's reference to the 1983 withdrawal of the Marines following the bombing in Beirut (which D'Souza misdates to 1982 in his book).
Is D'Souza dishonest in omitting any reference to the passage on Reagan in bin Laden's 1996 declaration? Or is D'Souza unfamiliar with it and a fraud in pretending to expertise that he does not have? You be the judge.
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