Death of bin Laden: Post the second

Right-winger Dennis Prager is disturbed that the brother of one of the 9/11 victims, instead of writing “about bin Laden’s guilt, about evil, and about experiencing some degree of moral and emotional satisfaction that the loved one’s murderer had been killed by American forces,” has said, instead, that we need to think about the dictators we support overseas and how we abuse our power.
Prager’s brilliant conclusion: Since this man isn’t reacting the right way, his mind has been “poisoned” by leftism: “Asking what America did to elicit the hatred of Muslim terrorists is morally equivalent to asking what Jews did to arouse Nazi hatred, what blacks did to cause whites to lynch them, what Ukrainians did to arouse Stalin’s hatred, or what Tibetans did to incite China’s harshly repressive treatment of them.” And leftists, you know, love to hate America that way.
Like most conservatives beating this drum, Prager steadfastly ignores the difference between “Why did they do it?” and “They were justified in doing it!” Suggesting that 9/11 was a logical response to American policy in the Middle East is not the same as saying it was a moral, ethical or justified response.
But admitting that would mean actually questioning American policy, or wondering whether accidentally killing children and blowing up wedding parties really gives us the moral high ground. We’ve killed hundreds of civilians over there, tortured many more: By Prager’s logic, it shouldn’t matter to Afghanis, Yemenis, Pakistanis or Iraqis what our reasons were, whether it was intentional or not: All that matters is, we’re attacking them.
But somehow, when it’s us, our motives should be taken into account and absolve us. The fact we were attacked excuses everything we do; anyone over there who complains about civilian deaths or torture is obviously a stinky little freedom hater.
We have both terrorist testimony and our own government’s conclusions to confirm that our actions create more terrorists than we kill. Figuring out how to fix that would seem like a good idea, and understanding how we’re perceived over there is part of that. That doesn’t mean we have to do what other countries want: If we could have peace by dissolving Israel and shipping the population to Alaska, that wouldn’t be acceptable.
But if they’d settle for us withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan, why not? Or at least hate us a little less?
As for Prager’s leftist bilge, does he consider Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell leftists? They both said that America deserved it. So did Anne Graham Lotz (Billy Graham’s daughter). And Sen. James Inhofe. And Fred Phelps and his followers say it every time they show up at a funeral. Are they examples of “how leftism makes decent people do indecent things?”
Prager’s obvious high sense of moral outrage would seem to require he eviscerates the right-wing on this point too. Somehow I don’t anticipate it happening.