Yours is the post of the day, and the Peters’ piece is the article of the week.
I too have tried to consider why the Left sees the Islamist as his ally rather than his blood enemy, when they appear to be polar opposites.
I agree with your analysis, but I’ll embroider a bit anyway. There are a couple of reasons. The first is that the average leftist is not rational, and despite his conceit he is not very knowledgeable about the world. What he knows about history and the military and current events he gets from Hollywood movies, his professor’s Chomsky rants, and the Comedy Channel. He’s convinced that Islamist rage has something to do with our oil companies, our Israel policies, and a lack of social programs for the poor which they will fix as soon as they take control in Washington.
And in any case, the Islamist gunman is someone far away, who kills people he doesn’t know, whereas the Republican next door is the immediate obstacle to everything he wants to achieve. In his mind the Islamist is the enemy of his enemy, which is to say, Republicans and believing Christians and Jews. He just can’t find it in himself to see the Islamist as any threat, except in terms of accidental collateral damage. And since he blames Republicans, Christians, Israel, and oil companies for the Islamist’s rage, he blames those same people for any collateral damage and for any danger he might himself be in for looking like one of us.
And the final reason is sheer uncomprehending moral cowardice. When the average leftist looks at Islamists he blinks, and then blinks again. Blaming Republicans, Christians, Israel, and the oil companies for Islamism relieves him of any responsibility to do anything to stop it, he is relieved of any need to explain why he sits frozen in place while the dangers gather. Attacking you and me is safe, we’ll never hurt him, we’ll defend to our deaths his right to blame us for everything that ever happened in history, for everything that ever happened to him in his life, whereas attacking Islamists could very well be fatal in the very here and now.
So thats it. For the leftist, the Islamist is the perfect wrecking ball that he thinks he can ride unharmed. Part of it is that he hates us, the enemy he knows, more than them, the enemy he doesn’t know. Some of it is sheer ignorance. And some of it is moral cowardice. He is the guy John Stuart Mill was talking about; the leftist will always be kept safe by better men than he.
Excellent observations for both of you. I am convinced that a substantial number, and probably even a deciding majority, of the mushy middle went for ObaMao by the combination of McCain’s pathetic debate performance and his ill-timed statement that an Obama presidency wasn’t to be feared. In other words, they were convinced that if the left was given power, they would suddenly begin to behave responsibly against the real threat of terrorist, particularly when the only viable alternative to them (McCain) publicly validated the theory.