But although it may be disappointing or even distressing that there are Americans who believe that America “had it coming” on 9-11, it is truly dangerous that there are Americans who refuse to treat radical Islamic terrorism as the threat it is. There are a great many people, including our previous President and most of the senior members of his administration, who, even as they fought them, refused to utter the term “radical Islamic terrorist” to describe the enemy. Why won’t they use the terminology? Because, they say, its use fortifies claims that America is hostile to Islam; and drives people to oppose us and even to become terrorists. We say, in response, that anyone who takes up the mantle of terrorism because someone calls an Islamic terrorist an Islamic terrorist was pretty far along the path to radicalism to begin with. And, despite the fact that the 9-11 hijackers were almost exclusively upper middle class, wealthy, well-educated, even professionals, from prominent families, there is a belief out there that it is poverty and Western prejudice that breed terrorists. (Please note that is the time we referred to above, one time the progressive left feels free to use the term “terrorist” to describe actual terrorists: when they can accuse a Western nation or society of doing something that causes people to become terrorists.)
The average American probably does not know and almost certainly does not believe that, when the actual Nazis (from Hitler’s Germany) were attacking, invading and conquering Poland, France, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, and bombing Britain, they were allied with (though not necessarily allies of) the Soviet Union. The Soviet government fought the Nazis only when the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union in a sneak attack (June, 1941). The USSR sent tons of vital materials to Nazi Germany, even up to the actual moment they were invaded by it. It also is true that America did not get directly involved in the war until the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and we declared war on Nazi Germany only after they first declared war on us. It is the natural inclination of Americans to live and let live, to stay out of conflicts that do not directly involve us, and to try to maintain the peace. We were complacent, perhaps, in the 1930s and before the attack on Pearl Harbor, but we were not complacent after it took place. And we were complacent about radical Islam before the 9-11 attack; but after that horrific event, there was no excuse for complacency. There still is none today, for the threat is just as real.