I wouldn't be nearly so troubled by Harvard University students identifying America as a bigger threat to world peace than the Islamic State if it weren't representative of the thinking of so many students throughout the nation. But it is.
The college blog Campus Reform posted a video of short interviews it conducted of Harvard students on campus last week. The question was simple and straightforward: "What is a greater threat to world peace, ISIS or America?"
One student answered: "I think American imperialism and our protection of oil interests in the Middle East are destabilizing the region and allowing groups like ISIS to gain power. ... We are, at some level, the cause of it."
Really? After we defeated Iraq in the Gulf War, we could have taken control of Iraq's oil interests. Did we? No. How about upon our victory in the Iraq War? Did we? No. America is not imperialistic. It is the most benevolent world power that has ever existed, and these Harvard students and their professors would understand that if they had any interest in viewing history and current events objectively instead of through their hate-America lenses.
What have allowed ISIS to gain power are President Obama's unilateral cessation of our own war on terror and his abandonment of Iraq after we had spilled so much blood and spent so many resources to stabilize the region. He knows better than to blame our failure to achieve a status of forces agreement on anyone but himself. He even bragged about this in his debate with Mitt Romney, so his current deceit and obfuscation on the matter are disgraceful. It is Obama and his ilk -- people with the same worldview as these Harvard students -- who are the main culprits here.
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Another student confidently asserted: "As a Western civilization, we're to blame for a lot of the problems that we're facing now. I don't think anyone would argue that we didn't create the problem of ISIS ourselves. ... (Middle Easterners) have a skewed view of us, just as a lot of Americans have a skewed view of them, of ISIS."
He doesn't think anyone would argue with his claim? Well, someone like me may not be "anyone" to this erudite student, but I know we didn't create the problem of ISIS, other than to the extent Obama's policies created the vacuum I just described. But I don't think that's what the student was referring to. He was implying, as so many academically indoctrinated leftists dutifully do, that our policies have caused radical Islamism itself.
These are familiar tropes of the left -- that America's unfair hoarding of a disproportionate share of the world's resources and its "imperialistic" policies have caused discontentment in the Muslim world and triggered a radical reaction in some of Islam's adherents. This is patently absurd. Radical and violent Islam is based on a religion or ideology that teaches that infidels must either submit or be brought into submission forcefully -- or killed. This ideology began more than 1,000 years before our Declaration of Independence, and it is thriving today. That these students don't understand that America is not causing this phenomenon -- that it's more a spiritual and ideological matter than it is political -- reveals that their minds are being poisoned and closed at this august university rather than opened and trained to think independently.
How about the suggestion that we Americans have a skewed view of ISIS? I assume he is implying that if we would just understand these people better, we could pacify them, as President Obama has been preaching for the past six or seven years. If anyone's view of ISIS is skewed, it's the left's. Members of ISIS tell us who they are. They behead people who don't submit to their extremism. It's pretty simple, and it's pretty hard to skew, though the left has done a masterful job of confusing itself.
A third student cheerfully proclaimed: "The amount of spending that America has on causes of potential destruction in the world is really outlandish. We've been learning about this recently, how much America spends on defense mechanisms alone, and it's really quite astounding compared to any other country in the world, really."
I hate to intrude into this student's bubble, but she should understand that America's unparalleled defense forces are what have ensured our protection and liberty and empowered this nation to be the greatest force for good in the past century and more. It is the left's gutting of our defenses that is leading to greater instability in the world and endangering our security.
This video should be a wake-up call to American parents -- at least the ones whose views aren't so anti-American as those of these students. We are looking at the next generation, which includes millions of Obamaites, who will be leading this nation into the future. It is time that responsible parents got off their clueless, apathetic duffs and started doing a better job of educating their kids and inoculating them against the infernal indoctrination that academia and our culture are serving to them in mentally lethal doses.
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