Marie Harf, spokeswoman for the U.S. Department, has taken a great deal of heat this week for saying this and other things regarding our struggle with the Islamic State (ISIS):


“Root cause” explanations constitute part of the fantasy life of liberals. They lead inevitably to an ever greater fantasy: the belief that poverty lies at the base of almost all malignant human behavior.  If the government can spend lots of money on something somewhere, all will be well. 

It’s interesting to recall that Lyndon Johnson, one of the big-time liberal presidents, exhibited a similar myopia when dealing with Vietnam and North Vietnam’s leader, Ho Chi Minh.  President Johnson delivered his first major speech about Vietnam on April 7, 1965 at Johns Hopkins University.  It is referred to as the “Peace without Conquest” Speech.  The title reveals its high-level content in wishful thinking.

In the speech, Johnson proposed a $1 billion development program for the Mekong River region including North Vietnam.  Johnson thought he could be buy off Ho with a TVA-like development program.  How could it fail?  It worked for FDR, right.  Guys like Johnson always had a price.  You just had to find it.  A water project, a military base, electric power.    As, Johnson told his press secretary, Bill Moyers, “old Ho can’t turn me down.”  Wrong.

Well, Ho was a Marxist ideologue, and he rejected the offer the next day.  Johnson must have been perplexed.  LBJ couldn’t understand a sociopathic Marxist ideologue like Ho, and today’s liberals cannot comprehend the fact that Islam is the driving force in our present-day world-wide struggle with a resurgent, modernized ideology that is replacing the failed Arab socialist nationalism of the twentieth century.