By David French , CP Guest Contributor – August 8, 2014

When I came home from Iraq in 2008, friends frequently asked me what I learned “most” from the experience. That’s a tough question to answer, and it depends greatly on context. I learned many things about my faith, my family, and my country, but if the question relates to the war itself, I’d tend to say something like this: “I learned the enemy is more evil than you can imagine, and I learned that a deployment is more difficult than you can imagine.” But while the deployment was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, the chance to play a very small part (surrounded by a band of brothers) to fight this extraordinary evil made it the most meaningful year of my life.

Since I’ve returned — and it’s been almost six years — I haven’t stopped talking about the nature of the jihadist enemy. I share the stories as much as I can (when the context is appropriate), yet I continue to be discouraged by how few Americans — and especially how few of my friends on the left — truly understand (or even try to understand) what the world faces. So they react in outrage when Israel strikes at Hamas, use the collapse in Iraq to once again score political points against President Bush, and use words like “irresponsible” to describe actions like launching rockets at civilians while hiding behind civilian human shields.

Why is this the case? Why can’t so many liberals understand the pure evil of Islamic jihad? I can think of three reasons:

First, they’re often in the grip of a strange kind of moral relativism. I say “strange” because it’s not true moral relativism. Actions of domestic political opponents are condemned in the strongest possible terms, and the history of Christianity is treated as if it is nothing less than one long story of war, rape, and conquest. That’s not relativism; that’s judgmental in the extreme. The relativism emerges when evaluating other cultures, where even dark deeds are excused by “culture” or “colonialism” and regions in the grips of the worst kinds of pathologies are hailed for their rich and glorious traditions.

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