Never in my darkest days did I ever think that I would be agreeing soooo much with Patrick Buchanan. The clairty of his arguement in this case is simply stunning. He takes on the term "Islamo-facism" as used by Bush et al and digs a 6 feet grave for it (RIP). Here are some tasty quotes:
Unsurprisingly, it is neoconservatives, whose roots are in the
Trotskyist-social Democratic left, who are promoting use of the term.
Their goal is to have Bush stuff al-Qaida, Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and
Iran into the same “Islamo-fascist” kill box, then let Strategic Air
Command do the rest.But the term represents the same lazy, shallow thinking that
got us into Iraq, where Americans were persuaded that by dumping over
Saddam, we were avenging 9/11.But Saddam was about as devout a practitioner of Islam as his
hero Stalin was of the Russian Orthodox faith. Saddam was into booze,
mistresses, movies, monuments, palaces and dynasty. Bin Laden loathed
him and volunteered to fight him in 1991, if Saudi Arabia would only
not bring the Americans in to do the fighting Islamic warriors ought to
be doing themselves.And whatever “Islamo-fascism” means, Syria surely is not it.
It is a secular dictatorship Bush I bribed into becoming an ally in the
Gulf War. The Muslim Brotherhood is outlawed in Syria.“Islamo-fascism” should be jettisoned from Bush’s vocabulary. It
yokes the faith of a billion people with an odious ideology. Imagine
how Christians would have reacted, had FDR taken to declaring Franco’s
Spain and Mussolini’s Italy “Christo-fascist.”If Bush does not want a war of civilizations, he will drop
these propaganda terms that are designed to inflame passions rather
than inform the public of the nature of the war we are in, and the war
we are not in.
You’re right. It has frozen over!