Yesterday, TheDC published Part I of our interview with Dinesh D’Souza — the prolific writer, world-class debater, and now president of The King’s College in New York City — who is the author of the new book “The Roots of Obama’s Rage.”
In his new tome — which has inspired both passionate debate and vitriolic denunciation — D’Souza suggests that to understand Obama and the policies he is pushing as president, you have to understand the anti-colonial dreams of his father. These same dreams, D’Souza argues, are what motivate Obama today.
In Part II of our interview, D’Souza defends his thesis against what he calls the “single best piece of counter evidence against my theory,” and tells us about the recent conversation he had with his ailing debating partner, Christopher Hitchens:
TheDC: Let’s go to what I think is the most serious allegation in your book. I’ll just read the passage. Speaking about President Obama, you write, “His goal is not success in Afghanistan; rather, it is how quickly he can get America out. His anti-colonial strategy doffs a hat to political reality, but also ensures, win or lose, a prompt pullout from a war he doesn’t want to fight. Moreover, if America and NATO are seen to have ‘lost’ Afghanistan, that would be a good thing, because from the anti-colonial point of view, such a defeat would discourage colonial military expeditions in the future.” Is not the implication of this that Obama has increased American troops in Afghanistan, put them in the harm’s way, knowing that many will die in a mission he hopes they lose in order to discourage future American military expeditions? And if that were actually true, wouldn’t that make Obama not just radical, but evil?
Dinesh D’Souza (DD): No, because I don’t think that he would see his actions that way at all. I think Obama would see his actions this way. My two big pieces of support before I go into this. First, is the interesting comments by General McChrystal about Obama. Namely, I’m not talking about the prudence of telling Rolling Stone all this, because that was insubordinate and the firing of McChrystal was warranted under the circumstances. I’m talking about what McChrystal and his aides actually said. They said, “We presented Obama with what we thought was the counterinsurgency plan, a plan to try to win in a tough situation, and Obama was disengaged, he was uninterested, basically he didn’t care.” Now why would a president not care about his top general’s game plan to win in Afghanistan? Well, the short answer is because he doesn’t want to win! That would be an excellent explanation for why someone is bored or disinterested.
Here’s a second point. I saw Bob Woodward a couple a days ago on television, “Larry King Show,” and he was talking about an incident involving Joe Biden and Obama. Now remember this is the power of a theory, okay, its ability to predict the future. Obviously I haven’t seen Bob Woodward’s book, I know nothing about this, but my theory was predictive, and Woodward confirmed it. Biden basically goes up, this is as Woodward is telling the story, Biden goes to Obama and says, “Hey Obama, if you have a surge, Afghanistan becomes your war. You’re going to have to win and if you lose you’re going to take the blame.” Obama’s reply, very revealing, in effect, “Joe, I don’t see things that way. I don’t define victory and winning and losing the way that traditional politicians do. I am using a different compass altogether. For me, victory isn’t measured by winning in the traditional sense.”
Now, what I’m trying to say is this is exactly what the anti-colonial view would predict. It would predict that Obama would define victory much more in terms of getting us out of there than in terms of having, let’s say, a pro-American democratic government in Afghanistan.
NEXT: Does D’Souza believe Obama would prefer that we lose in Afghanistan?
