ROGER KIMBALL: The Lessons Of Culture, Benjamin Netanyahu Edition.

Here we are on the eve of Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to both houses of the United States Congress. The Obama administration is acting like a petulant twelve-year-old —how dare the Prime Minister of Israel come to the United States and speak before Congress when he wasn’t invited by us? — and the rancid Pelosi-Reid contingent of the Democratic Party has promised to take their marbles and go home: they won’t even listen to what he has to say.

The ostensible issue is Iran, with which the Obama administration is currently capitula—er, negotiating. The presence of a Jew, and a Jew from Israel, in the nation’s capital (and Capitol) is sure to offend the Mullahs in Teheran and it might just upset the delicate diplomacy by which Obama privately assures that Iran gets nuclear weapons while publically pretending to prevent that eventuality.

Back in 2001, when Barack Obama was in the Illinois State Senate and still battening on the wisdom of the “Reverend” Jeremiah (“God-Damn America”) Wright, Netanyahu was more forthright, and more percipient, than most politicians about the Islamic terrorist attacks of 9/11. Those attacks, he said, were part of “a war to reverse the triumph of the West.”

Netanyahu was right then, and he is still right.

Well, that’s why so many lefties sympathize with the terrorists. They want to reverse the triumph of the West too.