Why the Left Hates America Exposing the Lies That Have Obscured Our Nation's Greatness

chapter 1 September 11, 2001: "We Had It Coming" On September 11, 2001, Middle Eastern terrorists hijacked four cross-country flights originating from East Coast airports. The ensuing suicide bombings, which used the fuel-laden planes as explosives, killed more than 3,000 people. The World Trade Center's twin towers were leveled, and portions of the Pentagon lay in ruins. Just as they have done in times of tragedy in the past, millions of Americans rallied behind their nation. American flags adorned front porches and hung from highway overpasses. Forgotten recordings, such as Whitney Houston's 1991 Super Bowl rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner" and Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the USA," suddenly were in vogue again. Enormous amounts of money were generously given to relief funds. In Normal, Illinois, a five-gallon jug collecting donations in front of the local supermarket took in $5,000 an hour on September 11, netting $118,000. Those who could give more gave more. General Electric, Pfizer, and DaimlerChrysler each pledged $10 million to relief funds in the days after the attacks, heading a list of corporations that ultimately donated hundreds of millions of dollars. Blood donations skyrocketed. On that fateful Tuesday, typical was the scene at the Bonfills Blood Centers in Denver, which had collected 2,000 pints of blood in just a few hours. Divisions along political, economic, and racial lines had, at least temporarily, evaporated. We were all just Americans once again. The reaction to the attacks was quite different elsewhere in the world. In Nablus, on the West Bank of the Jordan River, thousands took to the streets to express glee, chanting, "God is great!" The chairman of the Syrian Arab Writers Association wrote that, on hearing the news of the attacks, "My lungs filled with air and I breathed in relief, as I have never breathed before." The Egyptian newspaper Al-Maydan editorialized, "Millions across the world shouted in joy: 'America has been hit'! This call expressed the sentiments of millions whom the American master had treated with tyranny, arrogance, bullying, conceit, deceit and bad taste." A columnist for another Egyptian paper wrote, "I am happy about the American dead," while a competing periodical's scribe boasted, "If Osama bin Laden is proven to be involved in the attacks on the U.S., I will make a statue of him and set it in my home." Intellectuals in the West joined the blame-America chorus. Italian Nobel laureate Dario Fo hypothesized, "The great speculators wallow in an economy that every year kills tens of millions of people with poverty--so what is 20,000 dead in New York?" Sunera Thobani, a Canadian feminist and former leader of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, decried U.S. international policy as being "soaked in blood." She asked, "[D]o we feel any pain for the victims of U.S. aggression?" The foreign anti-Americanism that greeted the September 11 attacks may have been disturbing, but it certainly was not a total shock. That the same societies that produced 19 men who eagerly gave up their lives to kill American civilians would also house countless others who share their hate is no surprise. The impulsively anti-American responses from the Western intellectual community, where hating the United States has long been an article of faith, wasn't totally unexpected, either. Truly perplexing was a phenomenon within our own borders. A campaign by a small but influential group of Americans blamed the mass murder on the United States. The tragic occasion was seen not as a time of sorrow but as an ideal opportunity to cart out a list of past sins, both real and imagined, committed by America. These sins (racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, and so on), they said, were the real reasons we were targeted. Those exploiting theFlynn, Daniel J. is the author of 'Why the Left Hates America Exposing the Lies That Have Obscured Our Nation's Greatness', published 2004 under ISBN 9781400080403 and ISBN 1400080401.