War Turns To 'Islamic Fascism'
By Associated Press
August 31, 2006
President Bush in recent days has recast the global war on terror into a "war against Islamic fascism." Fascism, in fact, seems to be the new buzzword for Republicans in an election season dominated by the war in Iraq.
Mr. Bush used the term earlier this month in talking about the arrest of suspected terrorists in Britain, then spoke of "Islamic fascists" in a speech in Green Bay, Wis. Spokesman Tony Snow has used variations on the phrase at White House press briefings.
Sen. Rick Santorum, Pennsylvania Republican, in a tough re-election fight, drew parallels on Monday between World War II and the current war against "Islamic fascism," saying they both require fighting a common foe in multiple countries.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Tuesday took it a step further in a speech to an American Legion convention in Salt Lake City, accusing critics of the administration's Iraq and counterterrorism policies of trying to appease "a new type of fascism."
White House aides and outside Republican strategists said the description is an attempt to more clearly identify the ideology that motivates many organized terrorist groups.
The White House yesterday announced that Mr. Bush would elaborate on this theme in a series of speeches beginning today at the American Legion convention and running through his address to the U.N. General Assembly on Sept. 19.
"The key is that all of this violence and all of the threats are part of one single ideological struggle, a struggle between the forces of freedom and moderation, and the forces of tyranny and extremism," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino told reporters traveling with Mr. Bush aboard Air Force One.
Depicting the struggle as one against Islamic fascists is "an appropriate definition of the war that we're in," Republican pollster Ed Goeas said.
Muslim groups have cried foul. Mr. Bush's use of the phrase "contributes to a rising level of hostility to Islam and the American-Muslim community," said Parvez Ahmed, chairman of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Dennis Ross, a Middle East adviser to both the first Bush and Clinton administrations and now the director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said he would have chosen different words.
"The 'war on terror' has always been a misnomer, because terrorism is an instrument, it's not an ideology. So I would always have preferred it to be called the 'war with radical Islam,' not with Islam but with 'radical Islam,' " Mr. Ross said.
Although "fascism" once referred to the rigid nationalistic one-party dictatorship first instituted in Italy, it has "been used very loosely in all kinds of ways for a long time," said Wayne Fields, a specialist in presidential rhetoric at Washington University in St. Louis.
"Typically, the Bush administration finds its vocabulary someplace in the middle ground of popular culture. It seems to me that they're trying to find something that resonates, without any effort to really define what they mean," Mr. Fields said.
Pollster Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center, said the "fascist" label may evoke comparisons to World War II and remind Americans of the lack of personal freedoms in fundamentalist countries. "But this could only affect public opinion on the margins," he said.
August 31, 2006
President Bush in recent days has recast the global war on terror into a "war against Islamic fascism." Fascism, in fact, seems to be the new buzzword for Republicans in an election season dominated by the war in Iraq.
Mr. Bush used the term earlier this month in talking about the arrest of suspected terrorists in Britain, then spoke of "Islamic fascists" in a speech in Green Bay, Wis. Spokesman Tony Snow has used variations on the phrase at White House press briefings.
Sen. Rick Santorum, Pennsylvania Republican, in a tough re-election fight, drew parallels on Monday between World War II and the current war against "Islamic fascism," saying they both require fighting a common foe in multiple countries.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Tuesday took it a step further in a speech to an American Legion convention in Salt Lake City, accusing critics of the administration's Iraq and counterterrorism policies of trying to appease "a new type of fascism."
White House aides and outside Republican strategists said the description is an attempt to more clearly identify the ideology that motivates many organized terrorist groups.
The White House yesterday announced that Mr. Bush would elaborate on this theme in a series of speeches beginning today at the American Legion convention and running through his address to the U.N. General Assembly on Sept. 19.
"The key is that all of this violence and all of the threats are part of one single ideological struggle, a struggle between the forces of freedom and moderation, and the forces of tyranny and extremism," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino told reporters traveling with Mr. Bush aboard Air Force One.
Depicting the struggle as one against Islamic fascists is "an appropriate definition of the war that we're in," Republican pollster Ed Goeas said.
Muslim groups have cried foul. Mr. Bush's use of the phrase "contributes to a rising level of hostility to Islam and the American-Muslim community," said Parvez Ahmed, chairman of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Dennis Ross, a Middle East adviser to both the first Bush and Clinton administrations and now the director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said he would have chosen different words.
"The 'war on terror' has always been a misnomer, because terrorism is an instrument, it's not an ideology. So I would always have preferred it to be called the 'war with radical Islam,' not with Islam but with 'radical Islam,' " Mr. Ross said.
Although "fascism" once referred to the rigid nationalistic one-party dictatorship first instituted in Italy, it has "been used very loosely in all kinds of ways for a long time," said Wayne Fields, a specialist in presidential rhetoric at Washington University in St. Louis.
"Typically, the Bush administration finds its vocabulary someplace in the middle ground of popular culture. It seems to me that they're trying to find something that resonates, without any effort to really define what they mean," Mr. Fields said.
Pollster Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center, said the "fascist" label may evoke comparisons to World War II and remind Americans of the lack of personal freedoms in fundamentalist countries. "But this could only affect public opinion on the margins," he said.
posted by Hanan Elbadry at 9:09 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home