Republican consultant Charles Black on why it makes sense to say we’re in a war against Islamic fascism:
It helps dramatize what we’re up against. They are not just some ragtag terrorists. They are people with a plan to take over the world and eliminate everybody except them.
This is the scary and idiotic rhetoric we’re going to increasingly see for the rest of the year. We have the best military in the world and an astonishingly large defense budget, and we can’t even take over Iraq. The “more war” crowd expects us to believe that terrorists have the means to take over the world?
The proper response to the assertions we’re seeing is ridicule, not argument.
August 30, 2006 at 6:23 pm
The alternative to this political rhetoric is for the American public to read serious scholarship. Is that what you expect?
August 30, 2006 at 6:32 pm
Jihadism: The Final Term
I think I have finally come to the point where I can agree that Jihadism is the proper term for what we are against. This ads clarity to all of the things we have to deal with. Following the lead
August 30, 2006 at 8:01 pm
I think you totally underestimate the irrational power of fear. People can sit in a house full of weapons with a fool-proof alarm system and still panic at the pictures of a CSI episode where someone gets murdered in their own home.
Do you really believe the bu**sh*t that Bush talks about that “Terrorists want to destroy people who love freedom”? Of course not! This statement is wrong on so many levels, but there are A LOT of people who believe that crap. Ridicule will unfortunately not put you in any position to win this battle.
August 30, 2006 at 10:21 pm
Why is it that the first thing that popped into my head when I read that was the theme to The A-Team?
August 31, 2006 at 4:20 pm
They’re getting that cr*p from the top:
“They have made clear their ultimate ambitions: to arm themselves with chemical, biological and even nuclear weapons, to destroy Israel, to intimidate all Western countries and to cause mass death in the United States.” -Dick Cheney
September 2, 2006 at 11:10 pm
I deal with this inside my own family. It’s amazing– on the one hand, their belief in America is so over the top that it’s the country that can do no wrong, and can never fail. At the same time, we’re all minutes away from having to chose death or conversion to Islam. Bizarre.