The Left’s Crimes of Silence-The blood of al Qaeda’s victims is on the hands of terror’s apologists.

August will mark the anniversary of the needless death of tens of thousands of innocents, of callous disregard for the widespread suffering of the weak on the part of imperious governments.

No, the anniversary has nothing to do with Iraq: It will have been one year since a heat wave swept Europe, killing more than 25,000 of the elderly and unprotected (15,000 in glorious France alone).

The death toll wrought by nonchalant neglect in Europe last August remains considerably higher than the total number of fatalities in Iraq since the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom—friendly, enemy and civilian combined.

The American Left never blinked as the real “old Europe” perished in the multitudes. There wasn’t a whisper of criticism of those “more humane” European governments whose apparatchiks refused to interrupt their summer vacations to respond to the mass dying among Europe’s pensioners. Those admirable European health-care systems failed horrendously—yet they remain, of course, the models to which we should aspire (no matter that every European I know prefers private care, if they can afford it).

Had the Bush administration allowed over 25,000 elderly Americans to die while our president cut brush at his ranch, howls of outrage would have shaken the heavens. The Left would have reminded us all of the virtues of Euro-socialism and the evils of a marketplace society.

No matter that, with far higher temperatures routine in the U.S., such a massacre-by-neglect has never happened here and never will. Reality has no weight for the ideologues who cannot live without the conviction that only the United States is ever guilty.

The silence of the Left in the face of uncomfortable truths is a hallowed tradition, of course, dating back to the earliest crimes of the Soviet Union. When the reality confronting the Left contradicts the theory, the theory must be preserved at any cost.

And there’s no sign of improvement, not a glimmer of the least scrap of conscience or integrity on the Left. It’s all about revenge against a democratic system that gives a blue-collar worker a vote equal to that of a university professor’s ballot, about hatred for the free market for providing better lives for the great majority while Marxism drowned in the bile of its victims. There’s no one the new American Left so despises as the working man or woman who continues to believe in the United States.

And it’s about power. Had Bill Clinton invaded Iraq and deposed Saddam, the Left would have cheered their throats raw, praising him as one of history’s greatest liberators. The rhetoric about Iraq isn’t about justice, or the Iraqi people, or even about the horrors of war. And it certainly isn’t about the welfare of our troops (there are few things more disgusting to a soldier than a campus coward speaking on his behalf). The great, unforgivable insult to the Left is that conservatives took the idea of liberation seriously and acted, while the Liberal-Arts faculty merely chattered about it (one thinks of the scene in that greatest of American films, Animal House, when a bewildered white student cries, “The negroes took our dates!”).

The global Left never cared about the Iraqi people until they became American “victims.” As Saddam Hussein slaughtered more Muslims through campaigns of oppression and wars of aggression than any tyrant since Tamerlane, the Left remained silent. But now that Saddam himself might face the death penalty, Leftists everywhere are wringing their hands at the thought of such injustice.

Where were they when the screams of torture victims pierced the prison walls under Saddam? Where were the celebrity journalists when Iraq’s mass graves were being opened over the past fifteen months? Where are the reports of the fierce joy of the Kurds, free at last, free at last?

Now, in late July of 2004, where is the Left as the Sudanese government conducts a campaign of genocide against the wretched of the earth in Darfur Province? Oh, yes, there have been a few crocodile tears—but where are the demands for intervention?

Where are the campus demonstrations against that great liberator, Robert Mugabe, who destroyed Zimbabwe, terrorized its people—and is using scarce reserves of food as a weapon while his citizens slowly starve?

Where is the American Left’s sense of justice in the face of European anti-semitism? Of course, the spreading hate-crimes against Jews, synagogues and cemeteries are all Israel’s fault…that’s been explained to us.

Then where are the protests against the corruption and repression used as tools of control by the Palestinian Authority? The self-respecting Leftist whispers, “It’s their culture…” As are suicide bombers, no doubt.

Why doesn’t the Left complain about the hate speech spewed in mosques and madrassahs around the world? Are calls to exterminate Jews and butcher Christians just “part of their culture,” too?

When will we see mass demonstrations demanding rights for women in the Islamic world? Are women’s rights only for middle-class whites with college degrees?

Where is the Left’s passionate sense of humanity when Islamic extremists behead the innocent—and videotape the event, to the glee of the Muslim world? Of course, those decapitations are really America’s fault…we’ve driven them to it, you see.

The truth is that our Left is so intellectually decrepit, so infected by dishonesty, so morally feeble that it has only breath enough to condemn American actions. No matter how many brown or black human beings suffer around the world—starved, ethnically cleansed, raped, tortured, murdered—it doesn’t count unless you can blame America.

This is a moral crime for which we all pay. By obsessing about Iraq—where the United States and its allies performed a great and noble deed, however imperfect the day-to-day details—the Left has tacitly agreed to let the rest of the world rot. And it is, indeed, rotting.

Intervention to stymie tyrants couldn’t be right in Bosnia or Kosovo when Democrats owned the White House, but automatically wrong with Republican sponsors.

This isn’t just hypocrisy on the part of the Left. It’s complicity. With tyrants and thugs everywhere. The blood of al Qaeda’s victims is on the hands of terror’s apologists, whether in Cairo or in Cambridge.

The domestic tragedy in all this hysterical propagandizing by the Left isn’t just the election-year divisiveness—it’s that our country needs a conscientious Left, with robust ideas to challenge those of the Right and the integrity to defend humankind, not just the rulings of an informal politburo.

Competition is vital in a democracy. Conservatives should rue the moral and intellectual weakness of the contemporary Left. Without competition, every system atrophies. With honest competition, we all perform at a higher level. It’s a sad day for our country when the Left’s philosophy comes from Michael Moore.

Meanwhile, another August looms in that Leftist’s fairy-tale world across the Atlantic. What measures have those humane Europeans put in place to protect the elderly against a return of high temperatures? That paragon of virtues, the French government, informed its elderly citizens that they need to figure out where they can go to stay cool.

Ralph Peters is the author, most recently, of “Beyond Baghdad: Postmodern War and Peace.”

The blood of al Qaeda’s victims is on the hands of terror’s apologists, whether in Cairo or in Cambridge.

Perhaps it's just a nit-picky point, but I don't quite agree with this sort of statement. The blood of al Qaeda's victims is on the hands of the people (loose definition) who committed the acts not their cheerleaders.

After the Left was successful in having America abandon Vietnam to the Communists, the Communists killed 1,500,000 people in Cambodia. The people respsonsible for these deaths are the Communists themselves. At the same time, these deaths would not have occured if we had persevered.

It’s a sad day for our country when the Left’s philosophy comes from Michael Moore.

Now THERE's a statement I can fully agree with.

Good article. Thanks for posting it.

But, I can't agree that all those on the left would have supported an invasion of Iraq during the Clinton era.

Flashback--townhall meeting in Columbus Ohio, 1998, where a Clinton team (composed of Madeline Albright, Sandy Berger, William Cohen) defends taking military action in Iraq. There was organized opposition to the idea from the audience.

When one questioner said as many as 100,000 Iraqi civilians could be killed in an attack, Albright replied, "I'm willing to make a bet that we care more about the Iraqi people than Saddam Hussein does."
Berger sought to frame the dispute in broad, strategic terms. He said the world could not afford to allow Iraq to flout the will of the international community.
"The lesson of the 20th century is, and we've learned through harsh experience, the only answer to aggression and outlaw behavior is firmness," Berger said.
"He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has 10 times since 1983," Berger said.

I think some of the liberals would have supported Clintonian military action against Iraq, but the "leftists" would not.

Berger (February, 1998)-- on taking military action against Iraq.U.S.'s Iraq policy catches flak in Ohio

Berger said that should military action be necessary, "the cardinal principle of the planning of this operation has been to seek to minimize civilian casualties.
"Obviously, that's not possible (to eliminate them altogether), especially when you're dealing with someone who uses people as human shields. But we have no intention of trying to wreak havoc on the Iraqi people."

Hostility Disrupts Favored Clinton Forum

After Clinton's Pentagon speech on Tuesday, the Columbus event was seen as the next step in a plan to build public support for a military campaign designed to diminish Iraq's capability to produce weapons of mass destruction while leaving Saddam Hussein in place.
Instead, the meeting exposed deep doubts about the policy among some in the audience and kept Albright, Cohen and Berger on the defensive much of the time. One White House official complained that CNN, which worked with the White House to organize the session, seemed caught off guard by the heckling and lost control of the proceedings.[snip]
One defender of the town hall meeting was former White House official George Stephanopoulos, who said it was not surprising to see Americans questioning policy before potential military action. [Stephanopoulos] predicted Clinton would have strong public support if he decides to strike Iraq.

The blood of al Qaeda’s victims is on the hands of terror’s apologists, whether in Cairo or in Cambridge.

I think that statement is taken out of the context that the author intended when he wrote:

This isn’t just hypocrisy on the part of the Left. It’s complicity. With tyrants and thugs everywhere.

That sentence follows those points, i.e. the complicity causes the blood of al-Qaeda to be on the hands of the Left.

The blood of al Qaeda’s victims is on the hands of terror’s apologists, whether in Cairo or in Cambridge.

I think that statement is taken out of the context that the author intended when he wrote:

This isn’t just hypocrisy on the part of the Left. It’s complicity. With tyrants and thugs everywhere.

That sentence follows those points, i.e. the complicity causes the blood of al-Qaeda to be on the hands of the Left.

The death toll wrought by nonchalant neglect in Europe last August remains considerably higher than the total number of fatalities in Iraq since the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom—friendly, enemy and civilian combined.

The American Left never blinked as the real “old Europe” perished in the multitudes. There wasn’t a whisper of criticism of those “more humane” European governments whose apparatchiks refused to interrupt their summer vacations to respond to the mass dying among Europe’s pensioners. Those admirable European health-care systems failed horrendously—yet they remain, of course, the models to which we should aspire (no matter that every European I know prefers private care, if they can afford it).

Had the Bush administration allowed over 25,000 elderly Americans to die while our president cut brush at his ranch, howls of outrage would have shaken the heavens. The Left would have reminded us all of the virtues of Euro-socialism and the evils of a marketplace society.

France' next gov't may be socialist, in part because of the heat wave deaths. Chirac's career is winding down, and his recent santimonious moves against Israeli PM Sharon is yet another reprise of French hatred for the Jews. I don't think that a socialist gov't in France will necessarily be a bad thing for US interests. When the socialists fail once again, as they always do, the French will turn away again. In the meantime, the socialists will have to deal with the very real problem of having a large Moslem minority in the country. Kinda the flip side analogy to "only Nixon could go to China."

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