Dinesh D'Souza Walks on the Dark Side

Dinesh D'Souza

I have admired the spirited and patriotic writing of Dinesh D'Souza and even blurbed one of this books, What's So Great About America. But, along with many other former conservative admirers of his writing, I have been appalled by the thesis of his new book, The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11, which ascribes jihadi violence to pornography.

And now, I learn, there is even worse news. Here is a brief excerpt from "Radical Islam: What We Think We Know – And Why It's All Wrong," Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, March-April 2007, p. 46 (not online):

No one can deny the horror of Palestinian and Chechen attacks on civilians, but these have to be measured against the state-sponsored terror on the other side: the bulldozing of Palestinian homes, the shooting of stone-throwing teenagers, the obliteration of the Chechen capital of Grozny.

Comment: Israeli efforts at self-defense constitute state-sponsored terrorism? One can dispute tactics without using such a baseless and irresponsible term. D'Souza has apparently lost his moral compass as much as his common sense. (March 6, 2007)

Mar. 12, 2007 update: Scott W. Johnson points out that the above passage derives word-for-word from D'Souza's book. Indeed, Johnson quoted the sentence in his excellent review, "D'Souza goes native," where he astringently observed that "even State Department foreign service officers have [not] yet gone quite as native as D'Souza."

Related Topics:  Arab-Israeli debate in the U.S., Conservatives & Liberals receive the latest by email: subscribe to daniel pipes' free mailing list This text may be reposted or forwarded so long as it is presented as an integral whole with complete and accurate information provided about its author, date, place of publication, and original URL.