The more I think about his point the more compelling I find it. We never questioned ourselves in the wake of Oklahoma City. We never asked "why did McVeigh hate us?". We never discussed reversing desegreation or giving into his racist tendencies. We never even considered any of his demands nor worried about his religious or ideological sensitivities. We acknowledged McVeigh for what he sas, a hate-filled, neo-Nazi psychopath, and tried, convicted and executed him without apology to anyone except his victims on that horrible day.
We didn't do any soul-searching per se (sure we wanted to know what made this man tick and why he did what he did). We didn't declare ourselves guilty and decide we needed to be more sensitive to the racists among us. We condemened McVeigh. He was considered a criminal and an aberration.
An excellent point. For the white supremacists, we dismissed their root causes out of hand. We didn't claim that chickens were coming home to roost for letting minorities into our society. We didn't wring our hands over sending US troops into segregated high schools to compel a hostile society to accept integrated schools. Forced bussing for integration may have been controversial but nobody could claim that segregation was a worthy goal and expect to be given a respectful hearing. And rightly so. One could argue about tactics, but the objective of equality should not be debatable. But why do some on our Left (and even some on the Right) assume that the root causes cited by the Islamofascists are justified?
"Understanding" our enemy must mean knowing more about them in order to beat them--not to justify our surrender to them by elevating vile goals into reasonable objectives that we must accomodate.
Of course, we can't really fight the Islamists the way we fight the neo-Nazis. Neo-Nazis are atomized and marginalized. Their international web reaches all the way to Europe, but the web is composed of similarly addled losers living at the edge of society. There are no deep pockets providing ample money and educational resources to provide ideological consistency across the ranks of neo-Nazis and white supremacists. They are a law-enforcement problem.
This difference is very important. If we are ever to fight Islamists as we fight neo-Nazis, we must atomize them. We must deprive them of financial support and ideological support that sustains them.
This is why democratizing the Moslem world is so important.
And this is why one day, we will have a day of reckoning with Saudi Arabia. Their money and support makes Islamists a threat to our very cities instead of a bunch of losers we laugh at for their silly garb and farcical beliefs--and occasionally prosecute and execute if their sick rants over cheap and plentiful beer turn into violent action.
