Unfortunately, Bush’s ridiculous rhetoric is no surprise. As Erich says, Bush needs to inflate the perceived threat from terrorists so he can justify his insanely expensive (in both lives and dollars) response. I still remember one of Bush’s campaign advertisements during the 2004 election: the ad criticized Kerry for not voting to build more B2 stealth bombers to help fight terrorism. Yes, B2 stealth bombers — to help fight a bunch of sociopaths with box cutters, AK-47s and bottles of explosive chemicals in their carry-on bags. How ridiculous is that?

The longer Bush is in office, the more I realize he is delusional. First, he inflated his fight against al Qaeda — an organization that probably has fewer people than most any big-city high school — into a “global war on terrorism,” and now he believes he is fighting global “Islamic fascism.” In both cases, he seems to believe he is on a mission from God and, like so many crusaders before him, he doesn’t appear to let reason and rationality ‘cloud’ his decisions. Unfortunately for all concerned, we now see the result of inflating the size of the target before shooting at it: lots of very angry people who don’t appreciate being part of the unnecessary collateral damage. Who can blame them?

What the fascists in Italy and Germany (and elsewhere) did in the 20s and 30s to distort national politics was very similar to what we see going on in Iraq. They had armies (blackshirts in Italy, brownshirts in Germany) of essentially bullies who would invade the streets, beating people up, destroying property, to demonstrate their power and to argue that their political opponents did not have the ability to “protect” the citizenry. The riots drove popular opinion into the camp through what amounted to protection racket schemes–”You want this to stop? Vote me in.”

Looking at the events in Iraq purely in terms of tactics, they are imitating their political forebears. Fascist may be the best label describing these tactics.

Islamic fascism…well, one must ask how one feels about Sha’ria Law and the way it oppresses people, and look at the extreme governance of the Taliban in Afghanistan, all of which was loudly proclaimed to be based on Islam. The problem then is trying to tease about ideology from power-mongering.

Not responding to the actions of these people would probably have been the best policy. But that is very, very hard to do.

The national defense needs to be relevant and focused on the danger. We shouldn’t take on all Islamic people (even if the attackers call themselves Islamic) when it is only a tiny subset of Islamic people who orchestrated the 9/11 attacks. We should be above name-calling. No need to call anyone “fascist,” especially when they don’t qualify as fascists.

We need steady, careful, resolute relevant defenses to attacks and potential attacks.

It’s not a matter of whether our national defense is “strong” or whether we “cut and run.” It’s whether we’re aiming at the right target and whether we being careful to not goad people on to start new unnecessary fights.

I take exception to the use of “fascist” in this context, because it is incorrectly applied. Fascism by definition has to do with an end goal being a well ordered state, with a central authority that’s very firmly corporeal. These folks don’t fit that description. As far as I know, they have no end goal other than destroy Americans.

Which does lead me to wonder what exactly it is they want to do should the day come they actually get us to leave and they end up In Charge. The Taliban had a shot at running a state and made a thoroughgoing mess of the whole thing (and we should all remember, or try to, because we won’t, that Afghanistan is in the state it is in because of the Taliban). What would be the grand state that would replace our so-called puppet regime once Bin Laden “wins”? I don’t think they have their political act together enough to be real facsists.

No, they’re just murderers.