Who knew conservatives were so sensitive to people’s feelings? First David Frum wants to protect Christians from any educational content that might conflict with their principles, and now Daniel Henninger, a Wall Street Journal columnist, asserts that a link between 9/11 and Iraq exists, well, because some people feel it exists:

Nearly four years after what happened on September 11, we must now debate whether a linkage exists between that day and the war in Iraq. After President Bush associated the two several times in his defense of Iraq this week at Fort Bragg, both the House and Senate Democratic leaders pounded the linkage.

House Leader Nancy Pelosi was explicit: “He is willing to exploit the sacred ground of 9/11, knowing that there is no connection between 9/11 and the war in Iraq.” Senate Leader Harry Reid said the September 11 references don’t offer “a way forward” in Iraq and only remind us that bin Laden “is still on the loose.” To be able to separate September 11 and Iraq into wholly unrelated realms may be possible for very smart people–but not everyone.

On a very warm Wednesday this past May, during Fleet Week in New York City, a passerby at Ground Zero encountered some 150 astonishingly young Marines in fatigues, wet with sweat after a run, standing at attention on the site’s edge, outside the fence. They were from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, and they appeared to be in the middle of a formal ceremony. Yesterday the organizer of the May event, Maj. Dave Anderson, explained they were laying a wreath to honor the victims of September 11, and that the three Marines chosen to lay the wreath had earned Purple Hearts while serving in Iraq. When the ceremony ended, he said, a woman came out of the crowd, crying, and grabbed his wrist to say that her brother had died in there that day, and she said to him, “When people see you Marines doing this, they’ll know that you will take the fight forward.”

So it is that below the level of exquisite analysis now common in our politics, some Americans do exist who credit a connection between September 11 and events in Iraq. Perhaps there will be a poll out in a few weeks that will expose their sentiment to the greater weight and rigor of statistical science.

Conservatives used to criticize this sort of mushy-headed thinking; now it’s becoming de rigeur on the right. So what if there’s no reliable empirical evidence of a connection between Iraq and the 9/11 attacks? Henninger has found some “sentiment” linking the two, so it must be true! Clearly, the reality-based community on the right has given way to the conservative postmodernists.

(Related post: The press notices Bush tying Iraq to 9/11, 6/29/05)