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I believe one thing that underlies leftists' distaste for talking about terror (even: a difficulty acknowledging that terror is a legitimate problem, or granting that this or that person is a 'terrorist', etc) is that on some instinctive level they identify with all terrorists.

I do not mean that they share their goals but that they envy their methods. To be a leftist is to be in a perpetual impatient state of desiring radical change. For obvious reasons of morale (leftists are only human after all), leftists *need* to believe that whatever radical change they desire is actually possible within their lifetime, which means that they must instinctively resist attempts to put radical activities (of which terrorism is, after all, an extreme example) "out of bounds" so to speak.

It's not that leftists favor Islamofascism any more than anyone else does. At times their appeasement tendencies can seem to be rooted in fear and couched in defeatism, but I never get the sense that the fear is "real"; leftists don't *seriously* believe that our military warring against Islamofascists halfway around the world will get them attacked as they sip their three-dollar coffee - it's almost the opposite in fact (if they *did* perceive the terror-threat as real they would not be indulging in their leftist fantasies during wartime).

Because primarily it's that leftists, if only subconsciously, wish to leave the Islamofascists' methods on the table if at all possible. Strong-willed efforts against terrorism on the part of Western capitalist republics make leftists despair for the twin reasons that (a) it delegitimizes radical behavior altogether, which is precisely what leftists would like to reserve the right to engage in (if Necessary) and achieve significant effects by doing so; (b) if successful a war against terror strengthens the country, making implementation of whatever flavor of left-wing ideology both less appealing to others, and (not coincidentally) less feasible in the first place.

Sir, with all respect, i believe you give the left too much credit.

Our universities have been co-opted by the left; universities are where the intelligentsia live in their soft-skill world; the intelligentsia soon becomes the self-anointed elites; elites always know what's better for the rest of us untermenschen then we ourselves do.

So they rant and rail away, never wanting to accept the historical and factual evidence that if they actually get their "revolution", they are the first voices of "opposition" (to the new, progressive, totalitarian leadership) to be silenced.

They are the enemy within.

I think you've nailed part of it, but I also think that there's a more direct explanation. Post-modernist thought reduces all cultural differences to being nothing more than a style or fashion difference. The entire thought process is built on it. It's so ingrained that it's a religion. They cannot deal with the thought that the Islamists hate them simply because they exist and they're not Muslims. The Japanese have a saying about being able to look at a door and say, "what door?" This is the thought process. Since they can't acknowledge that the Muslims want to kill us because their religion says to kill all infidels, they deceive themselves into thinking that if only we were nicer to them, everything would be all right.

Hence, they blame Bush for 9/11, instead of the terrorists. They blame Israel for not giving up more and more land instead of the terrorists. A friend of mine, who teaches at the same college I do, claims that the terrorists are just a small criminal gang, and that law enforcement is the proper way to deal with them.

They have no problem with the mayors of San Francisco, Houston, and New York ordering their police departments not to cooperate with INS. They claim it's Bush's fault for being asleep at the wheel before 9/11 when an ACLU lawsuit was what intimidated the airlines from refusing boarding passes to middle eastern men who bought one way tickets on the day of the flight and showed up without luggage.

Their faith in the attainability of a post-modernist society is absolute. They will not consider any information that contradicts their belief.